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A review by cuddlesome
Dragon Ball, Vol. 1: The Monkey King by Akira Toriyama
3.0
A bit of autobiographical information to contextualize how I'm coming at this--
So I started to watch Dragon Ball Z roughly three months ago because my friend was watching Dragon Ball. "Don't bother with original Dragon Ball," he said. He and I both figured I had enough pop culture osmosis to have a general idea of who was who and what was going on in Z; I had watched the Broly movies from the 90s with zero context years ago.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks after starting DBZ and I'd bought a Raditz shirt to wear to a convention (he was and still remains my favorite character based on design and wasted potential alone, don't @ me, I love him more than I love myself). I got several compliments on my shirt from DBZ fans. They echoed my friend's sentiments: "Don't bother with original Dragon Ball."
Only after finishing all nine seasons of DBZ, having it consume my life slightly with its fun action scenes, science fantasy, and dramedy, and starting the somewhat arduous task of sitting through Dragon Ball GT, did I finally sit down to take a look at vanilla Dragon Ball.
And--uh--yeah, I think there's a reason I was warned off. I'm aware that in its original run DB and DBZ all run together, but I have to imagine that either there's going to be an eventual tonal shift leading up to/in congruence with the arrival of the Saiyans (who were definitely for sure not invented retroactively COUGH COUGH). While DBZ has comedy elements, they take a back seat to the action. Not so with DB. You can't take two steps without tripping over a bawdy joke.
"Balls! Boobs! Butts!" Akira Toriyama, a Japanese man from circa 1984, yells at me, an American woman in 2023, waving keys in my face. "Laugh! Please laugh!"
A single delicate snort escaped me at the inevitable "oh no a poor dragon lost its balls :(" joke we couldn't resist using early on. Otherwise, I was pretty stone-faced. This humor will definitely do it for someone, though.
Ironically, the particular print that I have is rated T while the copies of DBZ at my local library are A for All Ages. We can blow peoples' insides to gory bits with lasers but we wouldn't want the children to see undies. (To be clear, though, I don't disagree with the T rating--it's downright vulgar in places).
PUTTING ALL OF THAT ASIDE, these character designs are so charming and distinct. They're really fun to look at and see exaggerated. Goku in particular is insufferably cute. I really love his expressions, naivete, tail, and terrifying proclivity for devouring predatory animals. Frankly, the retroactive creative move to make him from a race of warmongering alien pirates makes him LESS weird than if he were just a feral were-monkey boy who was born to human parents, in my opinion.
I was surprised at how quickly a lot of the mainstay characters show up in volume one. The dedication that the series has to keeping up with (most) of them in the long run is interesting (and maddening, for some of them). I like how self-centered and suspicious a lot of the characters around the more magnanimous and trusting Goku are. Bulma in particular makes it clear from the second she hits the scene she's in it for herself and is willing to manipulate her way to getting what she wants. The same goes for Yamcha, who I was mildly surprised to see in an antagonistic role despite knowing it going in.
I feel like I'll be satisfied with skimming through most of the rest of this series while stopping for characters I recognize, fight scenes, and great ape shenanigans. The general sense of humor when it leans on lewdness is lost on me at best and eyeroll-inducing at worst so I don't think I want to walk slowly through every moment of it. Still, I'll be looking forward to getting to see more of characters I like a lot in DBZ who ultimately end up getting sidelined due to power creep (Krillin, Chi-Chi, and Tien Shinhan in particular).
So I started to watch Dragon Ball Z roughly three months ago because my friend was watching Dragon Ball. "Don't bother with original Dragon Ball," he said. He and I both figured I had enough pop culture osmosis to have a general idea of who was who and what was going on in Z; I had watched the Broly movies from the 90s with zero context years ago.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks after starting DBZ and I'd bought a Raditz shirt to wear to a convention (he was and still remains my favorite character based on design and wasted potential alone, don't @ me, I love him more than I love myself). I got several compliments on my shirt from DBZ fans. They echoed my friend's sentiments: "Don't bother with original Dragon Ball."
Only after finishing all nine seasons of DBZ, having it consume my life slightly with its fun action scenes, science fantasy, and dramedy, and starting the somewhat arduous task of sitting through Dragon Ball GT, did I finally sit down to take a look at vanilla Dragon Ball.
And--uh--yeah, I think there's a reason I was warned off. I'm aware that in its original run DB and DBZ all run together, but I have to imagine that either there's going to be an eventual tonal shift leading up to/in congruence with the arrival of the Saiyans (who were definitely for sure not invented retroactively COUGH COUGH). While DBZ has comedy elements, they take a back seat to the action. Not so with DB. You can't take two steps without tripping over a bawdy joke.
"Balls! Boobs! Butts!" Akira Toriyama, a Japanese man from circa 1984, yells at me, an American woman in 2023, waving keys in my face. "Laugh! Please laugh!"
A single delicate snort escaped me at the inevitable "oh no a poor dragon lost its balls :(" joke we couldn't resist using early on. Otherwise, I was pretty stone-faced. This humor will definitely do it for someone, though.
Ironically, the particular print that I have is rated T while the copies of DBZ at my local library are A for All Ages. We can blow peoples' insides to gory bits with lasers but we wouldn't want the children to see undies. (To be clear, though, I don't disagree with the T rating--it's downright vulgar in places).
PUTTING ALL OF THAT ASIDE, these character designs are so charming and distinct. They're really fun to look at and see exaggerated. Goku in particular is insufferably cute. I really love his expressions, naivete, tail, and terrifying proclivity for devouring predatory animals. Frankly, the retroactive creative move to make him from a race of warmongering alien pirates makes him LESS weird than if he were just a feral were-monkey boy who was born to human parents, in my opinion.
I was surprised at how quickly a lot of the mainstay characters show up in volume one. The dedication that the series has to keeping up with (most) of them in the long run is interesting (and maddening, for some of them). I like how self-centered and suspicious a lot of the characters around the more magnanimous and trusting Goku are. Bulma in particular makes it clear from the second she hits the scene she's in it for herself and is willing to manipulate her way to getting what she wants. The same goes for Yamcha, who I was mildly surprised to see in an antagonistic role despite knowing it going in.
I feel like I'll be satisfied with skimming through most of the rest of this series while stopping for characters I recognize, fight scenes, and great ape shenanigans. The general sense of humor when it leans on lewdness is lost on me at best and eyeroll-inducing at worst so I don't think I want to walk slowly through every moment of it. Still, I'll be looking forward to getting to see more of characters I like a lot in DBZ who ultimately end up getting sidelined due to power creep (Krillin, Chi-Chi, and Tien Shinhan in particular).