Finished watching Dragon Ball

Finished watching Dragon Ball (1986, Toei Animation, 153 epi.) on 10/10/2017.

Goku is a young child with unbelieavable strenght and agility who's always lived up in the mountains, away from civilization. Bulma is a feisty, high-tech, city girl on a quest to find the seven legendary Dragon Balls using the Dragon Ball Radar she built. When all seven balls are gathered, the great Shen Lon dragon can be summoned to grant any one wish. And Goku just so happens to have one of them, thus bringing the two characters together for an adventure of a lifetime.

8.5/10 - I've actually never watched Dragon Ball back-to-back. As a kid I only watched a couple of episodes whenever I could as I was always stuck doing homework when it came on TV. Having it finally watched it all properly, I came to realize that watching the show as opposed to reading the manga it's based on can be a bit of a different experience. Y'see, one of the things this show is well-known for is the ridiculous prolonging of scenes by doing things like having characters stare at eachother for unnecesarily long amounts of time or even adding filler episodes or small parts and skits into a scene all for the sake of prolonguing the series' number of episodes. Whereas in the manga the pacing of the story is much quicker than the show, in a good way. That prolonguement of the episodes was a significant factor in my rating of the series. The next one might've been Goku's voice not changing very much with his age, hahah! That kinda bothers me. But maybe not so much. I don't know, maybe I was just used to the western dubs where his voice matures. Other than that it was still an enjoyable show. I'm just really left wondering what it would've felt like if the episodes weren't so long with all that filler content in the way. Well, I guess I might get an inkling when I watch Dragon Ball Z Kai next.

Finished reading Dragon Ball

Finished reading Dragon Ball (1984-1995) on 1/23/2017.

Story & Art: Akira Toriyama

Chapters: 519

Son Goku is a super-strong young boy with a mysterious tail on his back. When he meets a boisterous young lady named Bulma he learns that the four-starred orange crystal ball his late grandpa left him is one of the seven legendary Dragon Balls that summon the magnificent Shen-Lon dragon who can fulfill almost any wish. The two depart to travel in search of all seven Dragon Balls and on the way they make countless friends and enemies. As Goku grows older the fate of many worlds are in his hands as incredible foes attempt to misuse the power of the Dragon Balls.

9/10 - Yes, I know. But hear me out. Reading Dragon Ball was a very interesting experience. I've never witnessed a manga go through such drastic storytelling phases. As I was reading Dragon Ball I found myself often laughing at Akira's amazing jokes and slapstick. Sometimes it was just how wrong those jokes were. Some things he wrote and drew would obviously not fly today, hahah! And it just kept on coming and coming. It was so much fun! It was like reading the "funnies" but with plot and character development. But then came the Saiyans, things gradually tensed up but Akira's comedy was still there. Then Freeza tensed things up even more, I found Dragon Ball wasn't making me laugh as much as it used to. Not necessarily a bad thing. Just... interesting. The manga was maturing right in front of my eyes, something I had never witnessed before. But it wasn't until Cell came into the picture that things got really serious. The Cell arc wasn't playing around and things got really serious and even gory at times. But I feel like Akira knew that, otherwise he wouldn't have created Hercule. A character that was supposed to liven things up. However, for me, that didn't work very well. I found Hercule to be a nuisance and a distraction. Finally, I feel like Akira found a good balance of funny and mature with the Buu arc. Not only was Buu fearsome he was also very goofy. But that wasn't the only source of comedy in the arc. Young Goten and Trunks were quite the mischievous duo, and when you put them together (literally) against Buu, well, you get the perfect Dragon Ball recipe. And that's my story, folks.