The Less Remembered Classic

"Well I guess my favorite anime might be uh...um...hm...oh! Probably Dragon Ball!"

"Oh yeah man I love Dragon Ball! Frieza and Ginyu and-"

"No I said Dragon Ball, not Z."

"oh..."

"..it's the one before-"

"Y-yeah...that..."

*Later*

"How is Dragon Ball better? Z was what kicked ass. It's the one that's popular. It has Saiyans. It-"

*sigh*

...yeah...sadly that's how a majority of the conversations end up.

But I guess I can see why, Z, especially in America, is WAY more popular than Dragon Ball. Hell, a lot of people (somehow) don't even know Dragon Ball exists...even though it's clear in the first episode of Z that you're jumping into the middle of a story.

But regardless, why do I think Dragon Ball is superior to Z curious person that I made up? A number of reasons. The story's way better, things are a hell of a lot funner, there's actual adventure rather than just constant bland fighting and talking, there isn't the whole "world will be annihilated at the flick of a finger" crap, it feels way more magical, no Saiyan crap, and numerous other things.

The main thing though is that Dragon Ball is more of a cartoon than Z and is thus far more enjoyable to me. You see the only part of Z I actually liked was Buu. Because it was fun and cartoony again. Sure how powerful everything was by that point was ridiculous, but it was way more entertaining to watch than any of the embarrassingly serious crap that came before it.

Now a lot of you are probably thinking "it being more of a cartoon doesn't mean it's better". Allow me to explain how it does make it better then. How it makes the scenes more pleasing to the eye. How it amuses the viewer's head even if they aren't noticing. How it gives the show life.

Now this applies to anime in general. When anime was first getting started, with Astro Boy and the other such titles that Osamu Tezuka made, they were focused far more on animation. It was a much simpler time which meant much more effort was put into making things move. People were enthralled to even see characters take a step. In this way, Osamu Tezuka's shows were essentially the Disney of Japan and are some of the most like Western cartoons that there are.

In that sense, Dragon Ball was somewhat following in that vein. Yes it was more about fighting and far better animated than those original Tezuka shows were, but it still had the wonder of movement. The bounciness that shook the characters upon impact and exaggerated their postures for visual effect. Naturally this provoked more of a venture into humor which Akira Toriyama put to full effect in the original Dragon Ball.

Unfortunately as time went on he felt the need to make things more serious. Now more serious can be done fine if it remains interesting like with Piccolo and Red Ribbon. With those they constantly had stuff happening and they didn't last for HUNDREDS of episodes. They were nice compact adventures that didn't dawdle on boring locations like Namek or random canyon number seven. It also helped that the character designs were much more interesting. I don't give a damn what no one says, Frieza just looks gay and is the epitome of boring....

In fact...Frieza represented everything wrong with Z in my eyes. I mean the only thing all that Namek crap had going for it was the Ginyu Force.

Other than that it was just constant sitting around.

Waiting for crap to happen.

In the blandest setting in the entire series...

Against mostly uninteresting looking gay aliens (seriously, why was everything gay in that part of the series?).

With their leader just sitting in his throne room all damn day long...

And FINALLY, after ALL of his troops are killed he FINALLY comes in to fight.

And it takes...

For....

Fucking...

Ever....

Seriously! Like 3 god damn hours long! Why the bloody hell did it have to be that damn long?! It certainly isn't helped by the fact that everyone and their damn grandma in Z have to comment on every little move that happens in each fight during the whole thing, but it's just too god damn much! Frieza's already boring to look at. But three hours?...THREE HOURS?! Yet for some reason he seems to be the most remembered thing to many people...and I really don't get why.

...look, there's a point at which the viewer stops caring. Not fanboys, but normal people usually do. It's at that point that they question "why am I watching this? It's the same crap...going on...forever...". It isn't a game where you become accustomed to what you're playing and expect to have more of the same respond to your inputs on the controller. It's a cartoon. It's supposed to have stuff change often enough to keep the viewer locked in. If it just dawdles on forever on the same thing they lose interest and flip the channel.

The same fight with Frieza could've taken place in like thirty minutes or even shorter and would've still gotten the point across without wasting so much time on the redundancy of the situation. But what kills the fight is the animation. It's not as bad as some of the Android Saga animation, but it really went downhill quite a bit after the Saiyan Saga animation-wise (not that that was much better).

Now I ain't talkin' about the art. I'm talking about the animation. Many people get the two confused if they aren't familiar with one. Art is the style.

And while I'll always love Dragon Ball's nice soft roundness when compared to the jaggedy bland generic crap that Z became that's not what I'm talking about.  Animation is how something moves. Bounce and stretch as I explained thoroughly above. One of the reasons I loved Dragon Ball so much was because the animation was so much better.


Everyone always talks about the fights in Z being better, but that simply is not true. It's, again, just the same crap over and over. In Z the animators seemed to just get into a monotenous and, quite frankly, annoying formula of "punch, teleport, punch, teleport, teleport, appear in front of opponent, punch as opponent teleports away". And it just goes on...and on...and on like that. There is no life to it. Dragon Ball Z is like robots fighting each other.

Dragon Ball was so much more interesting when it came to fights. It wasn't all about that beam crap. Yes there was the Kamehameha, but that was hardly ever used until the situation actually needed it. In Z they're constantly throwing those ki-blasts. Dragon Ball focused a lot more on actual physical fighting and as such provided quite a bit more in the way of visual wonder when it came to the feats that characters pulled off against the diverse opponents they came up against.

And this is where animation came into play. Too many people pass off things that utilize bounce and stretch as goofy when in fact they're just tools. They're a means to pour life into the product. Cartoons are about exaggerations. Since they aren't real life they have to have extremes drawn to amplify the scene. Your eye sees the drawings going by too fast for you to realize what you're looking at, but your brain does pick up on it and puts it together that something that has more bouncing and stretching and warping in the frames is something that is more alive and active and as such is something that it's going to pay more attention to than something that has less of that type of element.

Basically what I'm saying is the squashing and stretching made Dragon Ball feel more alive than Z. The more constant movements and flow of the body actions is far more pleasing to the mind than the robotic stiff animation shortcuts that litter Z. With opponents that flew and that moved too fast for people to see half of the time the animators didn't need to animate as much. The manga is nowhere near as bad with this as Akira Toriyama drew still images. But in the cartoon teleporting during fights and disappearing was just cheap tricks most of the time so that the people working on it didn't have to actually animate parts of the fights.

Now yes, that same thing happened in Dragon Ball from time to time, but that was just it. It was "time to time" not "EVERY SINGLE FIGHT EVERY SECOND". And the first time it's even used during the Krillin vs. Jackie Chun fight it's completely for comedy purposes with the Budokai Announcer participating afterwards in the hilarious Play they put on of what they did during the time that the audience could not see them. Even when those techniques were at their most prominent however, the fights still possessed amazing animation.

Even the most basic of fights against henchmen tended to have better animation. Take for instance the fight where Krillin is fighting General Blue of the Red Ribbon Army.

That scene that starts at about 15 seconds in is what I'm talking about. Not the best executed, but it certainly beats out the stereotypical "standing in one place and making the same punches over and over" from Z. The characters actually flip around the camera. And that's not even getting into the Goku portion of the fight.

Sadly, I couldn't find the Goku portion on youtube (seriously, why the hell is it so hard to find some of the original series' fights?), but I do remember this one bit where Goku ducks beneath Blue's attack and you can see a single frame where his head jerks up before squashing down to avoid the hit. It may sound silly, but watching it in motion adds quite a bit more liveliness than if he'd just stooped down without acknowledging the hit like they would do nowadays.

But let's not stop there shall we? Let's grab some more examples! How about one of the most memorable fights (to me) from the series? Jackie Chun vs. Goku at the end of the first tournament!

It may be clumsy at parts, but by and large is far more interesting than Z in that you can see all the movements. This is a rare moment of the combatants in the series actually being worn down to their last drop. They have no more energy to spare so they're actually having to fight and giving it their all instead of resorting to the typical tricks like in most other matches. This may be one of the, if not the, most relateable fights in the entire franchise. Nothing left to spare so they're moving at normal speed allowing you to see all the twists and flips that they do in full. All the impressive physical feats.

And of course the ever kick-ass Japanese theme, Mezase Tenkaichi, certainly helps the atmosphere.

And that's one thing that always sort of killed Z, at least in America. They always redid the soundtrack. You didn't get to hear the music that was supposed to be throughout the show like in Japan. You didn't get Cha-La-Head-Cha-La or Piccolo's theme or Buu's theme. You got techno club sounding crap.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the Falcouner music isn't...okay...but it doesn't belong in Dragon Ball is the thing. Dragon Ball is supposed to sound grand and orchestral. Take that away and you take away most of the atmosphere for the show changing it entirely which has sort of played a part in people expecting just non-stop gritty boring darkness in the West whenever they think of the show instead of the joyful fun happiness that's supposed to be present.

This came to its most rediculous extreme in the Broly movie (forgive me if it did get worse and I don't realize it since I stopped watching the American versions of Dragon Ball movies long ago) where they used actual metal Korn songs...I mean...seriously?...in DRAGON BALL?...what the fuck?

But that's neither here nor there. We're here (mainly) to talk about the animation. So why not present another tournament fight?

The fight between brothers. Goku vs. Krillin.

This fight is all about animation. At instances like 1:56 you can see Goku's arm actually bounces from the impact of Krillin's blows while Krillin himself gets a split second look of shock at around 1:58 or 1:59 when he notices Goku getting ready, Krillin's head yanking down slightly as the action happens.  Sadly cheap tricks are prevalent a bit here with reusing scenes but there's enough variety to keep it interesting.

Then, at around 2:06, a scene starts with Goku fully animated running at the screen which then pans around to a POV looking at Krillin where Goku finishes the attack, his feet constantly running (not something done in Z without lazy animation) which ends at around 2:12. Then shortly after at 2:20 another impressive feat begins where Goku hops into the air with Krillin taking off after him, them trading blows in rapid succession until they hit the ground. The camera actually pans slightly lending more to the feel of life in the scene which ends at 2:28 after panning around to face the now grounded Krillin. And of course, there's the delightful little scene of Krillin puffing up like a balloon. Sadly it's entirely absent of Mezase Tenkaichi which was in the original Japanese version so here's that:

For a final example let's head towards the end of the series with the main antagonist himself, Piccolo Daimao.

Now to me Piccolo was probably the best villain in the franchise. Scary when he first showed up as the creepy old man, the King of Demons, and was actually smart.

By now the teleporting really is starting to show, but mainly from the villain who's supposed to be better than the hero. Goku's moves are still shown mostly without interruption by quick movements, his skills on full display against a far more menacing opponent and one that in the end manages to actually overpower and practically kill him without much effort. Without the use of repeating scenes Piccolo and Goku are shown battering each other using weight and momentum to counteract the other's moves. Piccolo's tall form (him being amongst the tallest characters in the franchise) makes for some interesting maneuvering from Goku whereas in Z he would just be punching him anywhere to hurt him. You wouldn't get the scene of Goku rolling once he misses Piccolo and then immediately launching upwards after him in Z at 1:31. That would all be cut in favor of more teleportation animation shortcuts or generic looks upwards before leaping up.

And then the scenes right afterwards where Piccolo slams his hands into Goku's head is just painful. You can feel the surge of agony in that split second as you see Goku's head squash out in those few frames (something that would be a miracle to see at all in a Z fight), sweat peppering the air around him. Oh...and to all the people impressed by the "Frieza dodging everyone" crap, Piccolo did it first right here at 1:55. And finally the finish. That last punch. Goku goes sailing straight towards Piccolo and then WAM! Face is there in his fist for a few frames before the fist passes and Goku hurtles through the air. That all would pass far quicker in Z with less attention to the impact that that kind of blow would have. Instead here we get the same sense of pain that must have rocketed from that strike. The nose shattering force slowing the scene down for full effect.

Now, let's compare all this to Z. Since Frieza's the most popular I'll be doing him I guess...not that I'll have much to show. Just two videos cause I really can't stand the three hour fighting crap they pulled. But these should be enough to get my point across.

The first one will be the first part of Vegeta fighting Frieza's final form.

This right here is the epitome of what Z is. Just stale boring dodges and punches. The same damn actions used over and over in the most basic of patterns that can be drawn for the character's choreography.

As for the other video, here.

Surprisingly I have some positive things to say. This video possesses some of the best animation from a fight in Z...which is sad, but hey, at least it's a positive...for that little bit. It's those bits where Frieza is dodging Vegeta's blasts at 2:08-2:15 and 3:03-3:09 that I'm surprised made it into the show. You'd think they'd just continually teleport him in a blank floating animation. But no, they take the time to actually have Frieza bend in interesting ways before he makes the teleports.

...and sadly...that's about as good as it gets. At least for the Frieza fight. Most of Z isn't any better, and the little bits here and there of full animation are not nearly enough throughout the series.

With all that I've said, well...I hope I've explained why I like Dragon Ball more than Z. Why it feels magical and alive while Z feels robotic and boring.

But...just my opinion...