Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Dragon Ball
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8459 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Well, technically, there is no "Z" manga. "Z" was used in the anime, but in the manga, it's all just under "Dragon Ball". "Z" was added to the later parts of the manga when Viz licensed it, as to not confuse the American consumer.
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PBsallad
 Posts: 338 Location: Phoenix |
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@ptolemy18 - I agree with those points about OP vs. DB. Especially the goofy-looking character designs part. I would also atribute it's lower popularity to it's initial US anime release. It was heavily edited and what not. FUNimation is doing great with it though. I hope they get more of the series.
I'm pretty sure it would've been Dallas-Fort Worth. Since that's where FUNi is located, and where most of their stuff is done. |
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Iritscen
 Posts: 793 |
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You're right, PBsallad; I'm not sure why I said Houston.
Just to ask one more time, because I really am curious, did Toriyama pioneer the shounen concept of the good guy turning enemies into friends, or have any of you seen that in earlier manga than his? |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2544 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Again, Masami Kurumada's Ring ni Kakero (which introduced a ton of the concepts/tropes/cliches that shouen manga now has) had that, though not quite to the extent that Dragon Ball went. In RnK the main characters fight people who then become their friends and help out in some way at times; hell, two members of the main character team were originally rival-style characters who became best friends with the others after being defeated. Again, it wasn't quite to the extent of DB, where villians would become friends who always help out whenever they can. Even Fist of the North Star had that to an extent as well, but once again not quite to the same level that DB used it. |
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simside
 Posts: 29 |
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See, I thought I had read this in one of the brief author bio/talks at the beginning of the volumes I read, which was the 2nd edition Viz release. But I also don't have the volumes with me, so I can't verify either. The only one I remember clearly is the depressing one where he talks about his dog dying. I LOVE the Dragonball manga, and I'm sad it seems to be read less and less as the years pass. The anime still seems to be popular, especially among older fans, but I wonder if the younger crowd still gets into it. I'm ridiculously out of touch though, so I could be wrong about that. Anyway, I'm glad you wrote this, because it is hard to pinpoint just what it is about this that makes it better than many other Shounen Jump series. I didn't think I would like the manga, since I had first encountered the series on Toonami and the novelty wore off quickly, but the quirky sense of humor in the early volumes really won me over. I was also surprised to see the fun range of character designs he used to use, which explained anomalies like Puar and Oolong among all the superpowered aliens later in the series. My favorite part was definitely the Boo saga, at the end. As much as I liked the Namek and Cell stories, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to sit through another superpowered manly slugfest, no matter how well it was written (and to Toriyama's credit, I was thoroughly entertained by both even though I started in ready to hate them). And the Boo stuff was so different and so completely insane and unconcerned with continuity that I fell in love all over again. I thought it was a really fitting way to end the series, going back to the irreverence that made it so good early on. |
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Iritscen
Posts: 793 |
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The Buu Saga could also be seen as evidence of Toriyama's slowly slipping grasp on sanity. The most feared bad guy in the universe is a big pink baby that turns people into candy. When spoiler[Vegitto] is turned into candy, spoiler[he is still able to fight]. Gohan gets an "amazing" transformation that spoiler[does nothing to his physical appearance and is ultimately useless]. Goku gets an "amazing" transformation that rivals any of Frieza's forms for ugliness (spoiler[and is also useless, although that was a pretty cool twist]). And as mentioned before, the Fusion Earrings spoiler[were supposed to be permanent, and then, inside Buu, Goku and Vegeta separate] for no reason (and why are they so tiny?!). Don't get me wrong, it's still a pretty good story, but it also may be the product of a deranged mind.
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IKKIsama
 Posts: 89 Location: France |
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Arguably Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. |
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GVman
 Posts: 729 |
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What about Fist of the North Star? I'd assume it'd be pretty on up there on the list.
Anyway, it was mentioned in the article that the volumes were published uncut a second time. I she just talking about the Dragon Ball volumes being uncut, or the DBZ volumes? If the latter, does anyone how to tell which ones were published uncut? |
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Son-kun
Posts: 345 |
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The only way that I know of to tell if the volumes were published uncut is to look for the old Viz logo (ie., no "Viz Media" logos) on the SJ Brand Graphic Novels. The DBZ portion of the graphic novels have pretty much been edited by the time the Cell arc reached circulation, so there's no way of getting either the Cell or Boo arcs uncensored (for whatever tiny edits there might have been). But the censorship on the latter half volumes (DBZ vols. 1-26/ DB. 17-42) is pretty moot, so you're not missing out on much, if at all. It's the earlier volumes with a lot of the adult humor that have been censored.
I'm happy that I have the uncensored volumes of Dragon Ball when they came out, but I'm mighty tempted to get around to getting the Viz Big editions. Better durability and paper quality with color pages to boot. Dragon Ball's one of those mangas I can read/skim through quite often. Any cliche you see in modern shounen can be dated back to titles like Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star, Ring Ni Kakero, and Mazinger Z. It was Dragon Ball that spawned the influence of Jump artists to come. |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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I met him and his wife in person at some Jump events, and he seemed pretty sane. I'd call it more the product of a goofy author who's tired of writing serious fight scenes and wants to tweak his faithful beat-'em-up-loving fans in the nose a little. |
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