Also, I have finally thought of what I shall name my third new goldfish. He (or she, I can't tell) is now officially known as Aurum. It is the Latin word for gold.
First off, I'm gonna be a nazi and say that Dragonball is different enough from Dragonball Z to a different topic. Maybe that's just me. But really? Dragonball Z is the worst?
THE worst? I mean I guess everyone's entitled to their own opinion. I'm not even a huge fan of it, but that just seems weird.
I mean, if you look at Inuyasha, it's even longer and doesn't even end.
Upgrading computers is an absolute pain. I have spent an hour and a half yesterday, and two hours today trying to find the R.A.M that is compatible with my computer, and a hard drive that will be reliable. Yesterday I thought I'd found a great hard drive, and possibly some R.A.M so I saved the pages with the intention of buying today. THEY PUT THE PRICES UP!! Unbelievable... so now I'm forced to start the search again for something more in my price range. I want to scream.
The problem with disliking Dragonball lies entirely in the fact that you have a complete lack of context. Almost none of the audience for Dragonball in the United States understands what 10 year-old kids in the 80s DID understand, that Dragonball Z is essentially every Hong Kong Wuxia martial arts film taken to its logical extreme. Every action, every fight, every trope, is based off the New Wave Wuxia wave that was sweeping all of Asian cinema at the time.
You can't understand or enjoy Dragonball as anything but that, the first thirteen episodes of Dragonball sans Z notwithstanding, as that is a gag manga interpretation of a section of Journey to the West.
To anyone who dislikes the show vehemently, I do suggest giving the purist edition a try, if only to have an informed opinion when you say you dislike the thing.
The problem with disliking Dragonball lies entirely in the fact that you have a complete lack of context. Almost none of the audience for Dragonball in the United States understands what 10 year-old kids in the 80s DID understand, that Dragonball Z is essentially every Hong Kong Wuxia martial arts film taken to its logical extreme. Every action, every fight, every trope, is based off the New Wave Wuxia wave that was sweeping all of Asian cinema at the time.
You can't understand or enjoy Dragonball as anything but that, the first thirteen episodes of Dragonball sans Z notwithstanding, as that is a gag manga interpretation of a section of Journey to the West.
To anyone who dislikes the show vehemently, I do suggest giving the purist edition a try, if only to have an informed opinion when you say you dislike the thing.
^This.^
Also, is there anyone you won't try to sell on the Dragon Box, Dash?
Also, is there anyone you won't try to sell on the Dragon Box, Dash?
I won't try to sell it to people who either own it or the people for whom a $30 DVD box set isn't within their means. Everyone else though, they have to sit through my free advertising for one of Funimation's few quality releases.
I won't try to sell it to people who either own it or the people for whom a $30 DVD box set isn't within their means. Everyone else though, they have to sit through my free advertising for one of Funimation's few quality releases.
Oh, I know. You have my MSN and Skype, so believe me- I know.
I won't try to sell it to people who either own it or the people for whom a $30 DVD box set isn't within their means. Everyone else though, they have to sit through my free advertising for one of Funimation's few quality releases.
that does look a great deal but Id proboly buy the Freeza Saga or Andriod or Cell games saga
Dragonball is on my list, but I'm saving it for when I have a lot of free time, because I have a funny feeling that I will like it and feel compelled to watch the entire thing as quickly as possible.
For anime, I'd only watch DBKai, and only subtitled versions because Blue Popo.
I loved the manga, the manga was epic.
Personally, I think Kai is a butchered mess that completely misunderstands the influences of the series and, by "normalizing" and "modernizing" it to the standards of the likes of One Piece and other recent kids' shows from the region, it strips it of too much value for any of its benefits to be worth the trade-off.
Also, Blue Popo is only on 4Kids/CW, not the dubbed DVD/Blu Ray tracks or the Nicktoons airings. Not that anyone should be watching a Dragonball dub anyway, but at least don't lie about why.
I find it funny that you consider Dragonball better than One Piece. I'm on the opposite end. I consider One Piece an evolution of Dragonball in every way in the genre of shounen, and far above Naruto and Bleach in any form of imagination or quality. Even as a comedy, even as a parody, Dragonball is not as funny to me. I laughed a couple of times while reading it, whereas laughter for me is much more consistent in the humor presented in One Piece. The facial expressions, the silly slapstick, the intentional stupidity of the characters, the reactions, the timing; all better than anything I've seen in Dragonball. Dragonball appeals to me much more than Z or any of the other additions to it's story, and I can't deny it's basically the mother of shounen, the alpha and the omega action manga. But if I have to pick one set of one-dimensional characters to another, I'll pick the Straw Hat Pirates. But that's not the biggest reason I prefer One Piece: imagination. The characters are so varied and so unique in design and crazyness, the battles so far-fetched, the areas with their histories, people, and wildlife so original; anyone who hates this show looks at it at face value and doesn't take the time to look at the artistic side of it. Everything about it constantly surprises me in the imagination at work; it constantly makes me say, how can any man think any of this up?
Another manga with a similar startout to both stories that I prefer to Dragonball: Hunter X Hunter.
It really should be required reading for anyone interested in any Asian art, especially literature or cinema, because it's extremely influential. But then, the vast majority of anime fans aren't intellectually curious enough to make the logical leap from Japanese cartoons to other Asian cinema and foreign cinema in general, or even from one grouping of Japanese cartoons to another.
I find it funny that you consider Dragonball better than One Piece. I'm on the opposite end. I consider One Piece an evolution of Dragonball in every way in the genre of shounen
And there's your first problem right there. I generally don't like Shonen, because I'm not an 8 year-old kid(Japanese or otherwise). These stories are generally not aimed at me. It has to offer something else to be of value to me. Either their sale to kids completely baffles me(Hokuto no Ken/Fist of the North Star, Baki the Grappler), or they contain a subject or plot that is in some way either interesting to me or exceptional in some way. I don't like Dragonball because it's Shonen or even because it's Shonen done well, I like it IN SPITE of it being Shonen.
Eiichiro Oda is a professed Dragonball fan, and you can see that in his work, but by my standards he misses the mark. That is, in my experience, One Piece is one aspect of Dragon Ball distilled and separated from everything else in the formula. It feels a lot more simplified, it feels like the core of the experience has been ripped out and replaced with Shonen tropes that I simply don't care for. It may be well-executed for what it is and who it's for, I don't know, I just don't care for it. There's only so many ways a person can say "Friendship is good" before the message becomes grating.
and far above Naruto and Bleach in any form of imagination or quality.
...that's not exactly the highest bar you could have set, is it?
Even as a comedy, even as a parody, Dragonball is not as funny to me. I laughed a couple of times while reading it, whereas laughter for me is much more consistent in the humor presented in One Piece. The facial expressions, the silly slapstick, the intentional stupidity of the characters, the reactions, the timing; all better than anything I've seen in Dragonball.
All ripped entirely from Dragonball's comedic segments, though. The stupidity, the apetite, the obscene strength? All Toriyama tropes. To me, it never held up in the same way Doctor Slump or Dragonball's comedic elements did.
Dragonball appeals to me much more than Z or any of the other additions to it's story
As far as the original serialized comics(and thus, Toriyama) are concerned, the whole thing is just "Dragonball". From start to finish, it was just "Dragonball" for its entire run in Weekly Shonen Jump and its retail releases for both the tankōbon and kanzenban books. The "Z" was Toei's idea, and GT was Toei's production, writing and all(some character designs aside).
Semantics aside, there is actually a point to this: Dragonball, from beginning to end, is very much a cohesive entity. The first thirteen episodes are probably the main stand-out, really. What we have is a long-running wuxia film. We have your basic martial arts story that goes on into Red Ribbon(whose Muscle Tower is ripped straight from Game of Death), through more "magical" Wuxia martial arts like Zu Warriors, Storm Riders, to one of the odd Sci-Fi mutations of the New Wave age, and all the way through to its logical extreme in a cohesive world and within a single narrative. Its length allows it something that few other stories in the medium get to do: show a character(or group of characters) progress along the natural curve of improvement from just about the earliest levels to its logical extreme. It doesn't only steal outright from these tropes, but ads to them and mixes them in ways that are incredibly interesting. The entirety of the Saiya-jin and Freeza arcs consist of a clash of two different kinds of martial arts fighters that did not(at least commonly) exist in the same film together, creating an incredibly interesting dynamic. And, of course, there's Toriyama's gag manga expertise and various other influences being tossed in. It's a really odd mix that shouldn't work, but does.
Ah, I've drifted from the main point. And that main point is: Z is not all that different from original Dragonball. It's not some hackneyed addition from another genre. And since the New Wave Wuxia craze was in full swing by that time, he simply couldn't have made a martial arts story in any other way even if he wanted to(though you can tell from the shout-outs and homages that he very much did love this form of cinema).
I can't deny it's basically the mother of shounen, the alpha and the omega action manga.
Depends on what you mean. Weekly Shonen Jump had been running for a good 15 years before Dragonball was even a thing, and the genre was already well in place in the 1950s. If you mean that it is financially successful and very influential, then yes, it very much is "the mother of all Shonen".
But if I have to pick one set of one-dimensional characters to another, I'll pick the Straw Hat Pirates.
Why, exactly?
But that's not the biggest reason I prefer One Piece: imagination. The characters are so varied and so unique in design and crazyness, the battles so far-fetched, the areas with their histories, people, and wildlife so original
Which Dragonball are you watching that DOESN'T contain these things?
anyone who hates this show looks at it at face value and doesn't take the time to look at the artistic side of it. Everything about it constantly surprises me in the imagination at work; it constantly makes me say, how can any man think any of this up?
I dunno, I've never been too wowed by anything offered up by Oda. Am I missing something? Were the fish people supposed to be neat? Everything feels like another go at things that have been done before, and while that's fine and it may be done well, these are things that have never entertained me on their own merits and the narrative and execution don't sell it to me.
Something about One Piece that I don't have a space for but I want to say anyway: As an anime, it is made well after Japanese animation got obscenely ugly and computer-driven, the score is bad, the theme songs are annoying, and modern censorship is annoying, so I'm reading.
Your extra 9% probably comes from Funimation having really shitty taste in what to import 90% of the time, plus better marketing for the garbage than for the quality stuff that DOES get through.
But then, the vast majority of anime fans aren't intellectually curious enough to make the logical leap from Japanese cartoons to other Asian cinema and foreign cinema in general, or even from one grouping of Japanese cartoons to another.
It really should be required reading for anyone interested in any Asian art, especially literature or cinema, because it's extremely influential. But then, the vast majority of anime fans aren't intellectually curious enough to make the logical leap from Japanese cartoons to other Asian cinema and foreign cinema in general, or even from one grouping of Japanese cartoons to another.
The thing is I have wanted to read Japanese literature for a long time, but all I've had time to read so far is Ryunosuke Akutagawa's In A Grove. I meant to start by reading every translated Akutagawa, as I can't read Kanji yet, but I haven't had time.
And there's your first problem right there. I generally don't like Shonen, because I'm not an 8 year-old kid(Japanese or otherwise). These stories are generally not aimed at me. It has to offer something else to be of value to me. Either their sale to kids completely baffles me(Hokuto no Ken/Fist of the North Star, Baki the Grappler), or they contain a subject or plot that is in some way either interesting to me or exceptional in some way. I don't like Dragonball because it's Shonen or even because it's Shonen done well, I like it IN SPITE of it being Shonen.
Yes but I can enjoy stories aimed at children just as well. It's why I can still enjoy Scooby Doo, Spongebob, or Looney Tunes. I'm not going to argue that One Piece is a childrens-early teens cartoon, but I will argue its quality. And it's just as you said; I don't like shounen unless the story or characters or art or even imagination can stand out to me. One Piece, Hunter X Hunter, Hajime No Ippo, and arguably Fullmetal Alchemist (more of a bastard child between shounen and seinen) are the four shounen that I like the most and like, as you said, in spite of being shounen. Seinen tends to appeal to me much more usually.
Eiichiro Oda is a professed Dragonball fan, and you can see that in his work, but by my standards he misses the mark. That is, in my experience, One Piece is one aspect of Dragon Ball distilled and separated from everything else in the formula. It feels a lot more simplified, it feels like the core of the experience has been ripped out and replaced with Shonen tropes that I simply don't care for. It may be well-executed for what it is and who it's for, I don't know, I just don't care for it. There's only so many ways a person can say "Friendship is good" before the message becomes grating.
I know that Oda is a big Dragonball fan. And that's why I say that I consider One Piece to be an evolution of Dragonball, in that I consider it to be Dragonball with pirates, but better and more interesting.
...that's not exactly the highest bar you could have set, is it?
Bar? It's not a bar. One Piece just gets tossed together with Bleach and Naruto the most, so I'm pushing away the normal classification and saying that it's FAR above either one and shouldn't be pushed together with them.
All ripped entirely from Dragonball's comedic segments, though. The stupidity, the appetite, the obscene strength? All Toriyama tropes. To me, it never held up in the same way Doctor Slump or Dragonball's comedic elements did.
I don't know Doctor slump, but again I recognized this, and to an extent some of it is in Hunter X Hunter too, but I just like the way it's utilized in those more. But those things are mostly only used for Luffy, except obscene strength which is used for Zoro. The other characters have their own traits too that we've seen before, but again, I like more in One Piece.
As far as the original serialized comics(and thus, Toriyama) are concerned, the whole thing is just "Dragonball". From start to finish, it was just "Dragonball" for its entire run in Weekly Shonen Jump and its retail releases for both the tankōbon and kanzenban books. The "Z" was Toei's idea, and GT was Toei's production, writing and all(some character designs aside).
I classify them as different series only because they have separate titles; but I know its a continuing story. I only classify them as different series because they have different names; other than that I don't.
Semantics aside, there is actually a point to this: Dragonball, from beginning to end, is very much a cohesive entity. The first thirteen episodes are probably the main stand-out, really. What we have is a long-running wuxia film. We have your basic martial arts story that goes on into Red Ribbon(whose Muscle Tower is ripped straight from Game of Death), through more "magical" Wuxia martial arts like Zu Warriors, Storm Riders, to one of the odd Sci-Fi mutations of the New Wave age, and all the way through to its logical extreme in a cohesive world and within a single narrative. Its length allows it something that few other stories in the medium get to do: show a character(or group of characters) progress along the natural curve of improvement from just about the earliest levels to its logical extreme. It doesn't only steal outright from these tropes, but adds to them and mixes them in ways that are incredibly interesting. The entirety of the Saiya-jin and Freeza arcs consist of a clash of two different kinds of martial arts fighters that did not(at least commonly) exist in the same film together, creating an incredibly interesting dynamic. And, of course, there's Toriyama's gag manga expertise and various other influences being tossed in. It's a really odd mix that shouldn't work, but does.
Gurren Lagann did something similar but as a parody of the mecha genre, but in many fewer episodes. I could see where Gurren Lagann could have lasted over 100 episodes of just Simon and Kamina's adventures in the desert. I think a good plan would be to read Journey to the West and watch some films that influenced the show/manga, then reread the manga and see if I enjoy it more.
Ah, I've drifted from the main point. And that main point is: Z is not all that different from original Dragonball. It's not some hackneyed addition from another genre. And since the New Wave Wuxia craze was in full swing by that time, he simply couldn't have made a martial arts story in any other way even if he wanted to(though you can tell from the shout-outs and homages that he very much did love this form of cinema).
I heard after Z that it was supposed to end, but the popularity caused more episodes to be made and then it became more and more of the same ol same ol.
Depends on what you mean. Weekly Shonen Jump had been running for a good 15 years before Dragonball was even a thing, and the genre was already well in place in the 1950s. If you mean that it is financially successful and very influential, then yes, it very much is "the mother of all Shonen".
I meant as far as success and influence, yes.
Why, exactly?
One reason is that I grew attached to them first. Another is that Bulma annoys the shit out of me and if given the chance I would take an iron spike and shove it down her throat over and over. Nico Robin is one of the most sympathetic characters I've seen with one of the greatest character arcs I've ever seen; she blows Bulma out of the water. Nami is okay, but she kind of annoys me as well. But Bulma alone makes Dragonball nigh unreadable for me; I can't stand her. Another thing about One Piece is that the main characters have actual goals. In Dragonball, they don't really have one. Oh, on the topic of comparisons, in One Piece there's always a different bad guy every arc. In Dragonball its just one guy sending out lots of other guys over and over(like in the Power Rangers).
Which Dragonball are you watching that DOESN'T contain these things?
I didn't watch the anime I read the manga. I've probably said somewhere I watched it, but if so that was a typo, I meant to say read. 1. I don't even like Dragonball's art style. I don't like the character designs. As far as the rest, I'm not really saying Dragonball doesn't have these qualities, I'm saying that One Piece does them better and if I'm choosing between Dragonball or an evolved form of Dragonball, I'll choose the evolved form of Dragonball. I might reread it again and see if my opinion changes any, but right now that's where I'm at on it. I don't watch the One Piece anime either; because I can't stand it in animated form. I thoroughly enjoy it in the manga though.
I dunno, I've never been too wowed by anything offered up by Oda. Am I missing something? Were the fish people supposed to be neat? Everything feels like another go at things that have been done before, and while that's fine and it may be done well, these are things that have never entertained me on their own merits and the narrative and execution don't sell it to me.
If you've seen Dragonball first and haven't read up to the Grand Line, then OP will probably bore you and feel like nothing new. But once the characters make it into the Grand Line the story starts to unravel and the arcs get more and more interesting. Before the Grand Line, Oda takes his time developing the characters and their backstories, and then he starts on the actual plot once they reach the Grand Line. And that's when the characters and places start to get really amazing and imaginative. His art style might also seem lacking but once you get into the GL, it starts to show how such a simple art style can be utilized very well, and I love that about it. There's another new shounen out there that completely rips One Pieces style off, and I don't even want to read it because of that, even though I hear its interesting.
Something about One Piece that I don't have a space for but I want to say anyway: As an anime, it is made well after Japanese animation got obscenely ugly and computer-driven, the score is bad, the theme songs are annoying, and modern censorship is annoying, so I'm reading.
No argument. It's why I don't watch the anime version.
So yeah, now that I know there's an extra step it takes to enjoy Dragonball (what does THAT say about it though), I'll go ahead and find some of it's influences when I have time, then give Dragonball another chance.
This is really the first day, I've just sat around in my room without needing/wanting to go anywhere. It's kind of nice, really. 'Course I'm just sitting around waiting for the All Hallow's Eve party committee meeting to start...
I'm really happy the Chilean miners are going be rescued very soon!
Oh, yeah! The Plan B is about to reach the end and the clothes are ready. Including the 4 guys who going down to help them to prepare everything down below. It's very exiting ^^!
One of the drills has reached them so soon they might be able to get them out, although there's a couple of things they're not sure about yet... like reinforcing the hole, if it's stable...
but hopefully, fingers crossed, they should be out very soon
What is this about miners? Finally something I'm willing to read in this thread again...
There's 33 Chilean miners which were trapped in a mine for about 2 months. Today started the process to prepare the hole for rescue them at least. If everything goes fine, the monday or tuesday they will start to actually rescue them one by one
I'm working on my Halloween contest entry. The thing that sucks about having, like, a million legos is finding the right pieces, that you end up finding when you don't even need them.
Comments
This, I am pleased to hear.
Also, I have finally thought of what I shall name my third new goldfish. He (or she, I can't tell) is now officially known as Aurum. It is the Latin word for gold.
Maybe I should continue to mention her least favorite Anime. Dragonball.
On further examination, her rubbing it in might be a huge revenge for mentioning like every anime she dosen't like as one I love.
Note: Typing is hard while coughing
maybe it was namekian time or what ever freiza time is.
THE worst? I mean I guess everyone's entitled to their own opinion. I'm not even a huge fan of it, but that just seems weird.
I mean, if you look at Inuyasha, it's even longer and doesn't even end.
You can't understand or enjoy Dragonball as anything but that, the first thirteen episodes of Dragonball sans Z notwithstanding, as that is a gag manga interpretation of a section of Journey to the West.
To anyone who dislikes the show vehemently, I do suggest giving the purist edition a try, if only to have an informed opinion when you say you dislike the thing.
^This.^
Also, is there anyone you won't try to sell on the Dragon Box, Dash?
Oh, I know. You have my MSN and Skype, so believe me- I know.
that does look a great deal but Id proboly buy the Freeza Saga or Andriod or Cell games saga
I loved the manga, the manga was epic.
Also, Blue Popo is only on 4Kids/CW, not the dubbed DVD/Blu Ray tracks or the Nicktoons airings. Not that anyone should be watching a Dragonball dub anyway, but at least don't lie about why.
I find it funny that you consider Dragonball better than One Piece. I'm on the opposite end. I consider One Piece an evolution of Dragonball in every way in the genre of shounen, and far above Naruto and Bleach in any form of imagination or quality. Even as a comedy, even as a parody, Dragonball is not as funny to me. I laughed a couple of times while reading it, whereas laughter for me is much more consistent in the humor presented in One Piece. The facial expressions, the silly slapstick, the intentional stupidity of the characters, the reactions, the timing; all better than anything I've seen in Dragonball. Dragonball appeals to me much more than Z or any of the other additions to it's story, and I can't deny it's basically the mother of shounen, the alpha and the omega action manga. But if I have to pick one set of one-dimensional characters to another, I'll pick the Straw Hat Pirates. But that's not the biggest reason I prefer One Piece: imagination. The characters are so varied and so unique in design and crazyness, the battles so far-fetched, the areas with their histories, people, and wildlife so original; anyone who hates this show looks at it at face value and doesn't take the time to look at the artistic side of it. Everything about it constantly surprises me in the imagination at work; it constantly makes me say, how can any man think any of this up?
Another manga with a similar startout to both stories that I prefer to Dragonball: Hunter X Hunter.
cool bro
you forgot story
nah
The other 1% being?
And there's your first problem right there. I generally don't like Shonen, because I'm not an 8 year-old kid(Japanese or otherwise). These stories are generally not aimed at me. It has to offer something else to be of value to me. Either their sale to kids completely baffles me(Hokuto no Ken/Fist of the North Star, Baki the Grappler), or they contain a subject or plot that is in some way either interesting to me or exceptional in some way. I don't like Dragonball because it's Shonen or even because it's Shonen done well, I like it IN SPITE of it being Shonen.
Eiichiro Oda is a professed Dragonball fan, and you can see that in his work, but by my standards he misses the mark. That is, in my experience, One Piece is one aspect of Dragon Ball distilled and separated from everything else in the formula. It feels a lot more simplified, it feels like the core of the experience has been ripped out and replaced with Shonen tropes that I simply don't care for. It may be well-executed for what it is and who it's for, I don't know, I just don't care for it. There's only so many ways a person can say "Friendship is good" before the message becomes grating.
...that's not exactly the highest bar you could have set, is it?
All ripped entirely from Dragonball's comedic segments, though. The stupidity, the apetite, the obscene strength? All Toriyama tropes. To me, it never held up in the same way Doctor Slump or Dragonball's comedic elements did.
As far as the original serialized comics(and thus, Toriyama) are concerned, the whole thing is just "Dragonball". From start to finish, it was just "Dragonball" for its entire run in Weekly Shonen Jump and its retail releases for both the tankōbon and kanzenban books. The "Z" was Toei's idea, and GT was Toei's production, writing and all(some character designs aside).
Semantics aside, there is actually a point to this: Dragonball, from beginning to end, is very much a cohesive entity. The first thirteen episodes are probably the main stand-out, really. What we have is a long-running wuxia film. We have your basic martial arts story that goes on into Red Ribbon(whose Muscle Tower is ripped straight from Game of Death), through more "magical" Wuxia martial arts like Zu Warriors, Storm Riders, to one of the odd Sci-Fi mutations of the New Wave age, and all the way through to its logical extreme in a cohesive world and within a single narrative. Its length allows it something that few other stories in the medium get to do: show a character(or group of characters) progress along the natural curve of improvement from just about the earliest levels to its logical extreme. It doesn't only steal outright from these tropes, but ads to them and mixes them in ways that are incredibly interesting. The entirety of the Saiya-jin and Freeza arcs consist of a clash of two different kinds of martial arts fighters that did not(at least commonly) exist in the same film together, creating an incredibly interesting dynamic. And, of course, there's Toriyama's gag manga expertise and various other influences being tossed in. It's a really odd mix that shouldn't work, but does.
Ah, I've drifted from the main point. And that main point is: Z is not all that different from original Dragonball. It's not some hackneyed addition from another genre. And since the New Wave Wuxia craze was in full swing by that time, he simply couldn't have made a martial arts story in any other way even if he wanted to(though you can tell from the shout-outs and homages that he very much did love this form of cinema).
Depends on what you mean. Weekly Shonen Jump had been running for a good 15 years before Dragonball was even a thing, and the genre was already well in place in the 1950s. If you mean that it is financially successful and very influential, then yes, it very much is "the mother of all Shonen".
Why, exactly?
Which Dragonball are you watching that DOESN'T contain these things?
I dunno, I've never been too wowed by anything offered up by Oda. Am I missing something? Were the fish people supposed to be neat? Everything feels like another go at things that have been done before, and while that's fine and it may be done well, these are things that have never entertained me on their own merits and the narrative and execution don't sell it to me.
Something about One Piece that I don't have a space for but I want to say anyway: As an anime, it is made well after Japanese animation got obscenely ugly and computer-driven, the score is bad, the theme songs are annoying, and modern censorship is annoying, so I'm reading.
Your extra 9% probably comes from Funimation having really shitty taste in what to import 90% of the time, plus better marketing for the garbage than for the quality stuff that DOES get through.
Yes. This.
Sadly yeaaaah....
Yes but I can enjoy stories aimed at children just as well. It's why I can still enjoy Scooby Doo, Spongebob, or Looney Tunes. I'm not going to argue that One Piece is a childrens-early teens cartoon, but I will argue its quality. And it's just as you said; I don't like shounen unless the story or characters or art or even imagination can stand out to me. One Piece, Hunter X Hunter, Hajime No Ippo, and arguably Fullmetal Alchemist (more of a bastard child between shounen and seinen) are the four shounen that I like the most and like, as you said, in spite of being shounen. Seinen tends to appeal to me much more usually.
I know that Oda is a big Dragonball fan. And that's why I say that I consider One Piece to be an evolution of Dragonball, in that I consider it to be Dragonball with pirates, but better and more interesting.
Bar? It's not a bar. One Piece just gets tossed together with Bleach and Naruto the most, so I'm pushing away the normal classification and saying that it's FAR above either one and shouldn't be pushed together with them.
I don't know Doctor slump, but again I recognized this, and to an extent some of it is in Hunter X Hunter too, but I just like the way it's utilized in those more. But those things are mostly only used for Luffy, except obscene strength which is used for Zoro. The other characters have their own traits too that we've seen before, but again, I like more in One Piece.
I classify them as different series only because they have separate titles; but I know its a continuing story. I only classify them as different series because they have different names; other than that I don't.
Gurren Lagann did something similar but as a parody of the mecha genre, but in many fewer episodes. I could see where Gurren Lagann could have lasted over 100 episodes of just Simon and Kamina's adventures in the desert. I think a good plan would be to read Journey to the West and watch some films that influenced the show/manga, then reread the manga and see if I enjoy it more.
I heard after Z that it was supposed to end, but the popularity caused more episodes to be made and then it became more and more of the same ol same ol.
I meant as far as success and influence, yes.
One reason is that I grew attached to them first. Another is that Bulma annoys the shit out of me and if given the chance I would take an iron spike and shove it down her throat over and over. Nico Robin is one of the most sympathetic characters I've seen with one of the greatest character arcs I've ever seen; she blows Bulma out of the water. Nami is okay, but she kind of annoys me as well. But Bulma alone makes Dragonball nigh unreadable for me; I can't stand her. Another thing about One Piece is that the main characters have actual goals. In Dragonball, they don't really have one. Oh, on the topic of comparisons, in One Piece there's always a different bad guy every arc. In Dragonball its just one guy sending out lots of other guys over and over(like in the Power Rangers).
I didn't watch the anime I read the manga. I've probably said somewhere I watched it, but if so that was a typo, I meant to say read. 1. I don't even like Dragonball's art style. I don't like the character designs. As far as the rest, I'm not really saying Dragonball doesn't have these qualities, I'm saying that One Piece does them better and if I'm choosing between Dragonball or an evolved form of Dragonball, I'll choose the evolved form of Dragonball. I might reread it again and see if my opinion changes any, but right now that's where I'm at on it. I don't watch the One Piece anime either; because I can't stand it in animated form. I thoroughly enjoy it in the manga though.
If you've seen Dragonball first and haven't read up to the Grand Line, then OP will probably bore you and feel like nothing new. But once the characters make it into the Grand Line the story starts to unravel and the arcs get more and more interesting. Before the Grand Line, Oda takes his time developing the characters and their backstories, and then he starts on the actual plot once they reach the Grand Line. And that's when the characters and places start to get really amazing and imaginative. His art style might also seem lacking but once you get into the GL, it starts to show how such a simple art style can be utilized very well, and I love that about it. There's another new shounen out there that completely rips One Pieces style off, and I don't even want to read it because of that, even though I hear its interesting.
No argument. It's why I don't watch the anime version.
So yeah, now that I know there's an extra step it takes to enjoy Dragonball (what does THAT say about it though), I'll go ahead and find some of it's influences when I have time, then give Dragonball another chance.
and otherwise I still would have wanted to watch Super Sentai, but I'll mention that too.
Oh, yeah! The Plan B is about to reach the end and the clothes are ready. Including the 4 guys who going down to help them to prepare everything down below. It's very exiting ^^!
but hopefully, fingers crossed, they should be out very soon
There's 33 Chilean miners which were trapped in a mine for about 2 months. Today started the process to prepare the hole for rescue them at least. If everything goes fine, the monday or tuesday they will start to actually rescue them one by one
Yes. Photos would be greatly appreciated.