Is the Dragon Ball Series Overrated/Underrated?

190 5 8

by SaintSaiyan

by SaintSaiyan

Now, I got this idea after watching a Geekdom101 (The Best DB YouTuber out there) and a Frozen Particle video. However, unlike them, I'm gonna answer this for Dragon Ball as a whole rather than series by series. Here are their videos:

I'm going to touch on some of the points that Geekdom and FrozenParticle have made as well as give my own thoughts.

So is the Dragon Ball series overrated or underrated? I say it's both. I know I seem biased on this, but I'm gonna try as hard as I can to look at this from an outsider's perspective as well as a Dragon Ball fan.

I will first start off with how it is underrated.

First off, do I think it's the best anime ever? In terms of popularity, yes. In terms of quality and storytelling, no. For the later term, I'd say Fullmetal Alchemist is the best. Now, Dragon Ball "Haters" don't like the series because there is "no plot", "the characters look like they're on steroids", "they're too overpowered", and "they scream too much". Other than the first point(which ties into this refute), the points that most of the "haters" make is from a superficial stance without diving into the underlying themes. There are many character arcs and themes that people who've watched the show understand. Storytelling-wise, the Dragon Ball series significantly underrated by those outside of the fandom.

Secondly, it has a HUGE influence on the entire anime community in general. If it weren't for Dragon Ball, series like One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach would either be entirely different or completely non-existent. Dragon Ball has influenced or has been referenced in Sailor Moon, Yu-Gi-Oh, D-Gray Man, One Punch Man, Hetalia, Fairy Tail, Bakuman, Pokemon, Blood Lad, Hellsing, and so much more. And it's not just anime, the western world has also had a big influence from Dragon Ball. Series like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones became shows based on their books because of Dragon Ball which was one of the first shows to introduce the western world to serialized T.V. storytelling. You can also see references in cartoons like Adventure Time, Code Name: Kids Next Door, Amazing World of Gumball, Teen Titans Go and Teen Titans, Johnny Bravo, Stephen Universe (the biggest one to be influenced by DB in the western world), Kim Possible, etc. Yeah, it's pretty popular in both worlds.

Now, how is it overrated?

It's not. Nah, just kidding.

Most of it being overrated is because of the fans of the series hyping it up so much. In fact, many of the fans of DB have never even seen other anime thus leading to the "Dragon Ball is the greatest anime/manga ever". Another thing that irks me about the Dragon Ball fandom is that a lot of them say "Dragon Ball has awesome fight sequences" and I agree with that, but at the same time, it's taking away the thunder from other series. Have you ever seen a gif of a DB fight and wondered when the gif was gonna end? Well, that's thanks to Toei cutting corners on the animation and just putting some of it on loop. Now, as shown in Super, they don't do it as much, but it's still there.

This next point is specifically for Dragon Ball Z. For many of the "fans" of Dragon Ball, they've only seen Z/Super and not Ball. They regard Ball as "as the Adventures of Kid Goku" when in all actuality, that's true for only the first 2 volumes. It easily has more character development, a more consistent plot and fewer plot holes. Yet, the dub of Dragon Ball didn't come out on Toonami or other mainstream media until after Z and GT ended. By then, the fans completely disregarded the original series. Honestly, in my opinion, you're not a true Dragon Ball fan if you haven't seen the original series.

My overall opinion is if you haven't seen it, you should give it a chance before giving your opinion, and I don't mean just watching one episode and saying it's stupid. Sit down and watch a whole arc (if you choose to watch Z for this, I recommend Z Kai to avoid filler). If you have seen the series, explore, see other series before creating your opinion.

As always with these types of post, here are a few tags. They must do a "Is (insert series here) overrated/underrated" post.