{"id":152375,"date":"2025-11-25T17:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T17:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/152375\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T17:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T17:04:09","slug":"dragon-ball-officially-died-in-1996-came-back-a-zombie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/152375\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragon Ball Officially Died in 1996 & Came Back a Zombie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The original Dragon Ball<\/a> manga by Akira Toriyama concluded its run in 1995, and its iconic anime adaptation, Dragon Ball Z, aired its final episode the following year. These series defined the battle Shonen genre for decades to come, introduced some of the most popular fictional characters ever, and were of consistently high quality, naturally leaving fans wanting more. Sadly, when the fandom got its wish, what they got wasn’t Dragon Ball, but its living corpse.<\/p>\n

The real Dragon Ball ended in 1996, and every new anime since has been a cheap copy. And, for all the many issues Dragon Ball GT and Dragon Ball DAIMA have, this absolutely most applies to Dragon Ball Super. The primary modern continuation of Toriyama’s masterpiece, Dragon Ball Super is a bland, shallow, insulting disaster from start to finish, and it never should have been made.<\/p>\n

Dragon Ball Should Have Ended Permanently in 1996<\/p>\n

\"Goku
\n Goku turns Super Saiyan 3 during the Buu saga in Dragon Ball Z.Image via Toei Animation<\/p>\n

The ending of Dragon Ball Z isn’t perfect, but it is satisfying and as conclusive as it realistically could be. Beginning with the finale of the Buu Saga, Toriyama manages the frankly miraculous task of taking the messiest arc in Dragon Ball history, and somehow tying its various disparate elements together. Vegeta and Mr. Satan’s character arcs<\/a> are wrapped up flawlessly, Kid Buu, as the childlike embodiment of destruction, is both enormously entertaining, and works thematically as the final boss of the arc, and Goku using his Super Spirit Bomb to destroy Buu, followed by him and Vegeta cementing their new friendship with a simple exchange of thumbs up, are a pair of brilliant moments to cap things off.<\/p>\n

The epilogue of Dragon Ball, the “End of Z,” succeeds in spite of how clunky it is. With how long the series was, how many characters it featured, and how many in-universe decades had passed over the course of its run, ending things off on the note that there will still be more adventures to come just makes sense, especially given the anime’s overarching theme of there always being someone stronger. From now till the end of time, fans will poke fun at Goku for abandoning his friends and family to train Uub, a child he’d just met, but this type of behavior is entirely in line with how Goku typically acts, and the introduction of a purified, human reincarnation of Kid Buu<\/a> works to make the “End of Z” feel more like a natural extension of the Buu Saga.<\/p>\n

Dragon Ball Super is a Soulless Anime Compared to DBZ<\/p>\n

After DBZ’s finale, Dragon Ball GT continued on its storyline, without Toriyama’s involvement. While a complete mess in most ways, GT did at least attempt to carry on the spirit of Dragon Ball Z, offering brand-new ideas deeply tied to pre-existing lore, and naturally continuing the Z-Fighters’ character development. Similarly, Dragon Ball DAIMA has virtually no story to speak of whatsoever, but it has no grander ambitions beyond being a fun, silly, absolutely gorgeously animated adventure anime with some of the best-looking action<\/a> viewers will ever find on television, and it succeeds in that capacity.<\/p>\n

For ten years, Dragon Ball Super has sought to achieve everything that DBZ did, and while it’s arguably done so in terms of amassing popularity, the same cannot be said for its ability to deliver quality stories. The movie recap arcs that began the anime are horrendously animated, poorly paced slogs that are inferior to their film counterparts in every way, an impressive task when Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ was a worthless cinematic installment to begin with. The Universe 6 Saga is one of the most boring tournament arcs in anime history, with little to nothing of interest occurring throughout it, the Future Trunks Saga recalls Dragon Ball GT as it fumbles every interesting idea it has in the name of fan-service, and the Universe Survival Saga is nothing but mindless action and fan-service all the way through.<\/p>\n

Dragon Ball Super’s manga-exclusive arcs and movies all have their own issues as well, but there are certain overarching problems that make the series not just a poor sequel, but an outright zombie. Characters, most notably Goku and Gohan, act nothing like they should, the franchise’s internal rules and consistency are regularly tossed away without care, new power-ups and transformations are constantly introduced without them meaning anything, none of the arcs themselves have actual messages, and almost no one in the cast ever enjoys any type of character development. Dragon Ball Super takes iconic characters, props them up, and forces them into one meaningless fight after another, as it continuously dyes their hair new colors<\/a> in a shameless attempt to sell action figures, and to distract its audience from realizing there’s nothing of substance going on, and that there’s zero tension, due to the anime being set in a static status quo in-between the finale of the Buu Saga and the “End of Z.”<\/p>\n

Dragon Ball will always be legendary, but its legacy has most certainly been tarnished over the past decade. Instead of being remembered as a groundbreaking manga and anime first and foremost, its reputation moving forward will forever be of a meaningless, flashy product designed to push merchandise first and foremost. Had the story simply ended with DBZ in 1996, this unfortunate state of things could have been avoided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The original Dragon Ball manga by Akira Toriyama concluded its run in 1995, and its iconic anime adaptation,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-152375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}