Akira Toriyama truly made miracles. Many will believe he has been surpassed, but even for the best selling series of all time, the one you cover weekly, One Piece, Oda believes he's only trying his best to match the man he sees as master. Toriyama was your favourite mangaka's favourite mangaka. He will never be forgotten for how beautifully he changed our world.
You speaking about how Toriyama will flip from right to left in order to showcase who is in control reminds me of how Oda did that often in the Luffy vs Katakuri fight
14:02 The katakana spells out DON, which is a booming or banging sound (if it looks familiar, it's because it is used very frequently in One Piece). That panel is great - it is like the beam is being used to extend the sound effect to "BO-----OM!", emphasising its power.
Toribot was an amazing manga artist, but his paneling. MY GOD, this manga reads itself. You can't pick up one volume without finishing it, time flies. Sometimes, you end up reading an entire arc after just wanting to glimpse at a chapter. Only Berserk makes me do this too!
This is a great video. I love they types of discussions. I think speech bubble placement is also an important part of the equation. Toriyama used speech bubbles as anchor points. It's often where your eye starts and it's where you spend most of your time focused (reading) before your eye makes that trip across the artwork. Take the bottom panel at 2:59 for example, you would start at Grandpa Gohan's speech bubble, then follow through the line created by his attack to Goku's response (He's practically pointing at it). Goku's dialogue then makes your eye move back to Goku himself almost like you're checking back up on him after reading his response. Even the sound effects lettering is very important in how it guides yours eyes. Lettering is a pretty important job in making comics. In American comics that's a job in itself. Mangaka have to to do it all by themselves with mixed results, and Toriyama was a master at it. He made it look effortless in how it's integrated into the art and never bogged you down. If you want an example of bad lettering, "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime", stands out in recent memory. It often makes your eyes jump all over the place and makes it confusing as to who is saying what. That causes your eyes to travel over the same artwork many times in once panel, ruining the flow of the story. This is all caused by poor speech bubble placement.
Man, that was a beautiful tribute ;_; you really encapsulated and highlighted part of why I love Dragon Ball. How it's story is mostly told through the actions the characters take or don't take, the physicality of it all. It's incredible visual storytelling. I agree on the whole last segment as well. The paneling breakdown was also great btw. I could tell from my own experience what Toriyama was doing but I've never heard it explained as concisely as this before! Really helped me understand and appreciate it better
The Katakana in the beam page was "DON", ド(do) ン(n), it is a sound efect that One Piece specially uses a lot. It implies improtance and shock I think, Tom the carpenter allways talked about doing things with a Don! And it tends to appear on introductions for big characters
Comment for the sake of engagement. I would argue that Murata Yuusuke is one of the closest in drawing the "pure physically fights"... Then the Big 3 IIRC have at least one or two good fights in this style... There was even a video arguing about the importance of protagonists with "simplist" or even "boring" fighting styles so you can keep a balance in power system. There is too a "counter argument" from that Dragon Balls storytelling is weak because everyone is a physical fighter most of then end becoming redundant or even obsolete towards Gokuu... And I despise said argument, even if it makes sense... kinda... Also there is the SMA - Silent Manga Audition. Makes one wonder if the next pure physical battle shounen will be born there someday. Até mais ver mr. Poneis
I'd say, added to that, it is reasonable to add comparisons with Kishimoto's paneling to Oda's and Kubo's, as they are all big 3 authors. In my opinion, purely paneling wise, it is 1. Bleach (relatively interchangeable with Naruto, to be honest, for this it matters on the day, they are both almost equal) 2. Naruto 3. One Piece They are all very well done, significantly better than that of modern battle shounen manga, but I do not think any of them reach quite the fluidity and either conscious or subconscious thoughtfulness of Toriyama's paneling. I'd say the person who comes closest is Murata's OPM.
@@nivnavion Thanks for responding! Kishimoto is my fave Shounen mangaka, so I’m always curious to hear ppl appraise his artistic abilities. This video really made me appreciate Toriyama’s genius. While I prefer the more complicated battles of later shounen series, I still adore Toriyama’s paneling, framing, and choreography.
I hate to say it, but I'm not really a fan of Kishimoto's art. There are some pretty good looking pages in Part 1 (mostly after the ~80 chapter mark, as I didn't really enjoy the art before it), but nothing exceptional to me. Part 2 I mostly disliked artistically. However, there are two caveats to that. Firstly, when I read Naruto I didn't understand as much about paneling as I do now, so my opinion here mostly comes from having not enjoyed it rather than a technical breakdown. Secondly, my view on this is biased by how there are subjective, non-paneling aspects of Kishimoto's art that I don't like (my eyes find the way he does shading really unpleasant and I don't like his faces). I don't really recall Kishimoto doing the things with shape, space, or directing the eye, that Toriyama and Oda do. But again, it's been years. I'm definitely open to seeing analyses by people who love Kishimoto's paneling - it might not make me enjoy it, but I want to hear different perspectives from my own.
@@nivnavion Personally, I would rank Bleach at the bottom. If you like Bleach's aesthetic (which I know a lot of people do), it's good at looking cool and dramatic. But Bleach doesn't try to depict movement or positioning. Bleach fights are very flat and static, and the minimal backgrounds don't help. The empty backgrounds are a bit of an overdone criticism of Bleach, but I do think it's a relevant one here because backgrounds are necessary for establishing positions as distance, as seen in the pages I talked about in the video. Toriyama loved using those gridlike stone platforms for a reason. However, that doesn't mean Bleach's paneling is bad. That's the point I was trying to get at at 16:38 in the video. I personally like fights with physicality and motion, and where those things are tied to the beats of the fight rather than being superfluous. That's why I love the paneling styles of Toriyama and Oda. However, that's just not the kind of fight Kubo wanted to write. Bleach fights are more about the exchanges of powerups and how those tie into the character arcs of each fighter. While I have issues with that personally, it wouldn't fit with Toriyama-style paneling. Basically, while Bleach's paneling doesn't do the things I look for, you can't judge a fish for its tree-climbing. Also, again, I read Bleach before I understood as much as I do now about paneling, so this is how I felt when reading it, but not a technical critique. I actually wouldn't praise Murata's paneling that much. I'd call his OPM a case of not needing to rely on paneling because his raw skills with art are so strong. Murata is fantastic at drawing cool, dynamic action from interesting camera angles. And that is a component of paneling, for sure. But I don't think he tends to rely on specific techniques to direct the eye or make the action flow like Toriyama does. It's a different kind of thing. I actually prefer ONE's paneling in the webcomic of OPM (which also just has a better story). ONE's lack of skill at art that's aesthetically appealing in traditional ways meant he really needed to push his paneling and composition. I feel a lot more visually engaged reading the webcomic, or MP100, than I do reading a lot of action manga with "better" art. (There are also aspects of paneling, like timing, that Murata absolutely has been great at. I'm not trying to say he's totally carried by art skill and does nothing with paneling. Just that I don't think he's really pushing the same things Toriyama did.) This kind of thing is basically why I started my channel. There's nothing wrong with loving art like Murata's - it's genuinely incredible - but I think mangaka who fill their work with subtle technical tricks and are wizards with how they direct the eye and convey things visually deserve at least as much appreciation. There are basically two ways of drawing manga. By panels, and by pages. Some manga use panels as windows into the world and story. There's nothing wrong with that. Some of the most visually engaging manga I've read, like The Climber, are drawn that way. But Toriyama's way is to think of each panel as part of a larger page. He doesn't just try to draw what would exist and happen in-story. What happens in-story is partially dictated by how it can be composed across a page. Distances between elements, shapes, and the way your eye is meant to travel, are not just part of the experience, but define the experience. in that regard, I actually consider Oda the closest to Toriyama. Like Toriyama, Oda embraces that manga is a visual medium, and incorporates that everywhere. Oda doesn't compare to Toriyama in pure ease of reading. But I'd consider him an equal in overall paneling skill. He also heavily uses physicality, motion, and shape, and he's also thinking about how the eye is traveling across the page. If you asked both of them to draw a fight between two pure martial artists (as Goku vs. Gohan was), then Toriyama's would be better. But Oda has explored a much wider creative space than Toriyama has, because of how good Oda is at creatively drawing visual powers. A lot of manga based around unique, varied powers focus more on theoretical strategy and technical details. But Oda might be the best in the field at showing you those powers in creative, visual ways. He's able to do so many creative things with how to draw the eye around pages - the most obvious one simply being how Luffy's stretched arms can pull the eye along - that simply weren't options for Toriyama because of what Dragon Ball was about. Which isn't a problem with DB, but just shows that OP was able to do new things. Oda might not always make the action quite as clear as Toriyama did, but he pushes himself just as hard in finding ways to draw things creatively.
Argh. It was such a lovely piece of UA-cam with a lovely tribute. Then you gotta go and hit my man with the "popo and oolong were bad" rhetoric. I'll say this once, and I am not responding to replies, so leave your shots. No debates here. Popo is a djinn, they have black skin. Look it up. Oolong is just a joke. Despite it's nature, jokes are just jokes. Leave them where they belong.
Popo is blatantly a blackface stereotype and you have to be engaged in extreme cognitive dissonance to ignore that fact. Manga artists did not have zero awareness of blackface; blackface was in fact seen in many early manga, even those by Osamu Tezuka. It does not make the artists behind them intentionally racist, as it's likely that these ideas were unknowingly imported from western influences. That doesn't change that it perpetuates racist stereotypes and should be critiqued. Oolong was shown on screen as a general representation of how the first hundred chapters of Dragon Ball are filled with unfunny, sexist humor from more characters than just him. "It's just jokes" is a nonsensical excuse. If your jokes are based around being sexist, then your jokes are shit. It's a shame, because Toriyama was capable of much better humor at the same time.
@@Werb Popo is actually based on mahakala and at worst a Golliwogs. I dont think that Golliwog are racist but they are based on black faces. Mr Black on the other hand could be see as problematic due to his lips. I’m black so I have the same opinion on Mr Black lips as I do to Usopp lips: whatever.
@@Werb I just don't get it. As stated in your video, you clearly understand your little detour of preaching and posturing as "inappropriate", disrespectful and tasteless, yet you still felt its inclusion necessary. Why? What's stopping you from simply omitting these comments? It's both sad and ridiculous, you end up looking like a bad person because you couldn't resist the opportunity of displaying yourself as a good person and your values as the right values. This urge is genuinely compulsive and feels cult-like, the exact (and i really mean *exact*) same behavior can be observed among religious fundamentalists, the populace of fascist nations and, well, cults.
@@Hoichael It's somewhat inappropriate to harp at length about Toriyama's mistakes in light of his passing. It's also EXTREMELY inappropriate to give a series like Dragon Ball a glowing recommendation and outright tell people they should try reading it without giving fair acknowledgement of those issues. If I'm going to recommend people read a series that will display overt sexism and blackface to them, then I'm going to mention those aspects. Because people have a right to know that they will be exposed to those things if they read it. And it's irresponsible to spread these things without acknowledgement. Even many classic Looney Tunes cartoons display a warning that there is dated, racist imagery within them that is a product of the time. This is what people who complain about virtue signaling and call it "cult-like" don't understand. There is actual harm caused to others by exposure to racist tropes and misogynistic humor, both on an individual level and through the spread and continued normalization of such things. But acknowledging that requires empathy for others. If you lack that, then you don't even understand why someone would act out of empathy in the first place, and assume that others act of self-interest to "look good" because it's the only thing you know.
@@Werb I'm not "calling it cult-like", it is cult-like. The parallels are overt and measurable. Don't get me wrong though, i know you're trying to do the right thing, i just think you're wrong about what the right thing is. So wrong in fact that the mindset you're advocating actually results in additional harm done to the very people you seek to protect. The way you're approaching these problematic elements puts them on a pedestal they don't deserve, imbuing them with immense weight and power. Yes, imbuing, these qualities are not inherent. It's all a matter of mindset and emmanuelmondesir8677's comment above is a perfect illustration of that. How does this guy fit into your world view? Would you prefer him be harmed by these elements? Is it a bad thing that he isn't harmed by these elements, elements which will continue to exist in our world if we want them to or not? What if i told you that EVERYONE could think and feel like that, unharmed by the powers of evil, stripping evil of its power? You're partaking in the opposite endeavour, the preservation of a climate which constantly reinforces the power of these elements. You're taking softballs and turn them into nukes. How exactly are we fighting the powers of bigotry, by supplying them ammunition? Now, none of this is your fault. You're doing the best you can, acting according to the ethical standards of our times. Over the past decades progressivism has taken a bizarre turn for the worse and you're a victim of the resulting climate. A climate which has long moved past the foundational principle of empowering the weak. A climate which has moved on to replacing this maxim with a destructive fetishization of weakness. A climate where the weak are made weaker and the weapons of bigotry are empowered. It's surreal, frankly, and (un)fortunately neither you nor me have enough influence to change even the tiniest thing about it =)
I think now is more the time to appreciate when it was great, than point at where it wasn't. But yeah - as much as Toriyama's skills peaked at an incredible level, overwork and burnout definitely got to him as the years went on. It's a shame. I do think the Buu arc deserves some credit. In my personal view, the Cell arc was where Toriyama was forcing himself the hardest, both narratively and artistically. But the Buu arc felt like he decided that if he was going to keep doing this, he was going to have fun. He wasn't drawing the way he did when he was younger, but he was still bringing in the creative heart.
Thank you, Toriyama.
If you liked the parts of this video where I break down paneling, you can subscribe, if you want.
Akira Toriyama truly made miracles. Many will believe he has been surpassed, but even for the best selling series of all time, the one you cover weekly, One Piece, Oda believes he's only trying his best to match the man he sees as master. Toriyama was your favourite mangaka's favourite mangaka. He will never be forgotten for how beautifully he changed our world.
Akira stood upon the shoulders of giants like everyone else.
You speaking about how Toriyama will flip from right to left in order to showcase who is in control reminds me of how Oda did that often in the Luffy vs Katakuri fight
I'm sure the hardest part of this video was deciding what to talk about. It's all so next level.
14:02 The katakana spells out DON, which is a booming or banging sound (if it looks familiar, it's because it is used very frequently in One Piece). That panel is great - it is like the beam is being used to extend the sound effect to "BO-----OM!", emphasising its power.
When this king was at his peak, no other manga was even coming close.
Damn. Is this going to be the definitive Dragonball Paneling video? It might be.
RIP Toriyama sensei.
I was so happy to hear chrono trigger music in the background
Toribot was an amazing manga artist, but his paneling.
MY GOD, this manga reads itself. You can't pick up one volume without finishing it, time flies. Sometimes, you end up reading an entire arc after just wanting to glimpse at a chapter. Only Berserk makes me do this too!
This is a great video. I love they types of discussions. I think speech bubble placement is also an important part of the equation. Toriyama used speech bubbles as anchor points. It's often where your eye starts and it's where you spend most of your time focused (reading) before your eye makes that trip across the artwork.
Take the bottom panel at 2:59 for example, you would start at Grandpa Gohan's speech bubble, then follow through the line created by his attack to Goku's response (He's practically pointing at it). Goku's dialogue then makes your eye move back to Goku himself almost like you're checking back up on him after reading his response.
Even the sound effects lettering is very important in how it guides yours eyes. Lettering is a pretty important job in making comics. In American comics that's a job in itself. Mangaka have to to do it all by themselves with mixed results, and Toriyama was a master at it. He made it look effortless in how it's integrated into the art and never bogged you down.
If you want an example of bad lettering, "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime", stands out in recent memory. It often makes your eyes jump all over the place and makes it confusing as to who is saying what. That causes your eyes to travel over the same artwork many times in once panel, ruining the flow of the story. This is all caused by poor speech bubble placement.
Man, that was a beautiful tribute ;_; you really encapsulated and highlighted part of why I love Dragon Ball. How it's story is mostly told through the actions the characters take or don't take, the physicality of it all. It's incredible visual storytelling. I agree on the whole last segment as well.
The paneling breakdown was also great btw. I could tell from my own experience what Toriyama was doing but I've never heard it explained as concisely as this before! Really helped me understand and appreciate it better
Oh man using the Chrono Trigger OST for the video intro was so unwarranted 😭 you're gonna make me cry!
Rest in Peace to the legend we all loved him and his work, Akira Toriyama fly high. W video.
Excelent video. The granpa Gohan fight is also my favorite fight in the series, very glad to see such a good analysis of it.
Beautiful video. All I can say is that I love Dragon Ball, and Akira Toriyama will always be remembered for his impact on everyone who read his work.
i don't have anything to add other than that this is a great video and that i'm really glad ur back. just commenting for the algorythm
15:00 made me cry. Wow man.
The absolute god
Great video:)
What a great video 🎉
KING OF SHONEN
Amazing!
The Katakana in the beam page was "DON", ド(do) ン(n), it is a sound efect that One Piece specially uses a lot. It implies improtance and shock I think, Tom the carpenter allways talked about doing things with a Don! And it tends to appear on introductions for big characters
Comment for the sake of engagement.
I would argue that Murata Yuusuke is one of the closest in drawing the "pure physically fights"... Then the Big 3 IIRC have at least one or two good fights in this style... There was even a video arguing about the importance of protagonists with "simplist" or even "boring" fighting styles so you can keep a balance in power system.
There is too a "counter argument" from that Dragon Balls storytelling is weak because everyone is a physical fighter most of then end becoming redundant or even obsolete towards Gokuu... And I despise said argument, even if it makes sense... kinda...
Also there is the SMA - Silent Manga Audition. Makes one wonder if the next pure physical battle shounen will be born there someday.
Até mais ver
mr. Poneis
Someone send this to Toyotaro!
Out of curiosity, how would you say Kishimoto’s paneling skills stack up to Toriyama’s?
I'd say, added to that, it is reasonable to add comparisons with Kishimoto's paneling to Oda's and Kubo's, as they are all big 3 authors.
In my opinion, purely paneling wise, it is
1. Bleach (relatively interchangeable with Naruto, to be honest, for this it matters on the day, they are both almost equal)
2. Naruto
3. One Piece
They are all very well done, significantly better than that of modern battle shounen manga, but I do not think any of them reach quite the fluidity and either conscious or subconscious thoughtfulness of Toriyama's paneling. I'd say the person who comes closest is Murata's OPM.
@@nivnavion Thanks for responding! Kishimoto is my fave Shounen mangaka, so I’m always curious to hear ppl appraise his artistic abilities.
This video really made me appreciate Toriyama’s genius. While I prefer the more complicated battles of later shounen series, I still adore Toriyama’s paneling, framing, and choreography.
I hate to say it, but I'm not really a fan of Kishimoto's art. There are some pretty good looking pages in Part 1 (mostly after the ~80 chapter mark, as I didn't really enjoy the art before it), but nothing exceptional to me. Part 2 I mostly disliked artistically. However, there are two caveats to that. Firstly, when I read Naruto I didn't understand as much about paneling as I do now, so my opinion here mostly comes from having not enjoyed it rather than a technical breakdown. Secondly, my view on this is biased by how there are subjective, non-paneling aspects of Kishimoto's art that I don't like (my eyes find the way he does shading really unpleasant and I don't like his faces). I don't really recall Kishimoto doing the things with shape, space, or directing the eye, that Toriyama and Oda do. But again, it's been years. I'm definitely open to seeing analyses by people who love Kishimoto's paneling - it might not make me enjoy it, but I want to hear different perspectives from my own.
@@Werb Eh, I personally love Kishimoto’s shading and faces, but that’s just me.
@@nivnavion Personally, I would rank Bleach at the bottom. If you like Bleach's aesthetic (which I know a lot of people do), it's good at looking cool and dramatic. But Bleach doesn't try to depict movement or positioning. Bleach fights are very flat and static, and the minimal backgrounds don't help. The empty backgrounds are a bit of an overdone criticism of Bleach, but I do think it's a relevant one here because backgrounds are necessary for establishing positions as distance, as seen in the pages I talked about in the video. Toriyama loved using those gridlike stone platforms for a reason.
However, that doesn't mean Bleach's paneling is bad. That's the point I was trying to get at at 16:38 in the video. I personally like fights with physicality and motion, and where those things are tied to the beats of the fight rather than being superfluous. That's why I love the paneling styles of Toriyama and Oda. However, that's just not the kind of fight Kubo wanted to write. Bleach fights are more about the exchanges of powerups and how those tie into the character arcs of each fighter. While I have issues with that personally, it wouldn't fit with Toriyama-style paneling. Basically, while Bleach's paneling doesn't do the things I look for, you can't judge a fish for its tree-climbing. Also, again, I read Bleach before I understood as much as I do now about paneling, so this is how I felt when reading it, but not a technical critique.
I actually wouldn't praise Murata's paneling that much. I'd call his OPM a case of not needing to rely on paneling because his raw skills with art are so strong. Murata is fantastic at drawing cool, dynamic action from interesting camera angles. And that is a component of paneling, for sure. But I don't think he tends to rely on specific techniques to direct the eye or make the action flow like Toriyama does. It's a different kind of thing. I actually prefer ONE's paneling in the webcomic of OPM (which also just has a better story). ONE's lack of skill at art that's aesthetically appealing in traditional ways meant he really needed to push his paneling and composition. I feel a lot more visually engaged reading the webcomic, or MP100, than I do reading a lot of action manga with "better" art.
(There are also aspects of paneling, like timing, that Murata absolutely has been great at. I'm not trying to say he's totally carried by art skill and does nothing with paneling. Just that I don't think he's really pushing the same things Toriyama did.)
This kind of thing is basically why I started my channel. There's nothing wrong with loving art like Murata's - it's genuinely incredible - but I think mangaka who fill their work with subtle technical tricks and are wizards with how they direct the eye and convey things visually deserve at least as much appreciation.
There are basically two ways of drawing manga. By panels, and by pages. Some manga use panels as windows into the world and story. There's nothing wrong with that. Some of the most visually engaging manga I've read, like The Climber, are drawn that way.
But Toriyama's way is to think of each panel as part of a larger page. He doesn't just try to draw what would exist and happen in-story. What happens in-story is partially dictated by how it can be composed across a page. Distances between elements, shapes, and the way your eye is meant to travel, are not just part of the experience, but define the experience. in that regard, I actually consider Oda the closest to Toriyama. Like Toriyama, Oda embraces that manga is a visual medium, and incorporates that everywhere.
Oda doesn't compare to Toriyama in pure ease of reading. But I'd consider him an equal in overall paneling skill. He also heavily uses physicality, motion, and shape, and he's also thinking about how the eye is traveling across the page. If you asked both of them to draw a fight between two pure martial artists (as Goku vs. Gohan was), then Toriyama's would be better. But Oda has explored a much wider creative space than Toriyama has, because of how good Oda is at creatively drawing visual powers.
A lot of manga based around unique, varied powers focus more on theoretical strategy and technical details. But Oda might be the best in the field at showing you those powers in creative, visual ways. He's able to do so many creative things with how to draw the eye around pages - the most obvious one simply being how Luffy's stretched arms can pull the eye along - that simply weren't options for Toriyama because of what Dragon Ball was about. Which isn't a problem with DB, but just shows that OP was able to do new things. Oda might not always make the action quite as clear as Toriyama did, but he pushes himself just as hard in finding ways to draw things creatively.
You should do guts v rosine in berserk.
Brotha you gotta read some better books 1:09 if you like One Piece you will appreciate Herman Melville's "Mardi"
Argh. It was such a lovely piece of UA-cam with a lovely tribute. Then you gotta go and hit my man with the "popo and oolong were bad" rhetoric. I'll say this once, and I am not responding to replies, so leave your shots. No debates here. Popo is a djinn, they have black skin. Look it up. Oolong is just a joke. Despite it's nature, jokes are just jokes. Leave them where they belong.
Popo is blatantly a blackface stereotype and you have to be engaged in extreme cognitive dissonance to ignore that fact. Manga artists did not have zero awareness of blackface; blackface was in fact seen in many early manga, even those by Osamu Tezuka. It does not make the artists behind them intentionally racist, as it's likely that these ideas were unknowingly imported from western influences. That doesn't change that it perpetuates racist stereotypes and should be critiqued.
Oolong was shown on screen as a general representation of how the first hundred chapters of Dragon Ball are filled with unfunny, sexist humor from more characters than just him. "It's just jokes" is a nonsensical excuse. If your jokes are based around being sexist, then your jokes are shit. It's a shame, because Toriyama was capable of much better humor at the same time.
@@Werb Popo is actually based on mahakala and at worst a Golliwogs. I dont think that Golliwog are racist but they are based on black faces. Mr Black on the other hand could be see as problematic due to his lips. I’m black so I have the same opinion on Mr Black lips as I do to Usopp lips: whatever.
@@Werb I just don't get it. As stated in your video, you clearly understand your little detour of preaching and posturing as "inappropriate", disrespectful and tasteless, yet you still felt its inclusion necessary. Why? What's stopping you from simply omitting these comments? It's both sad and ridiculous, you end up looking like a bad person because you couldn't resist the opportunity of displaying yourself as a good person and your values as the right values. This urge is genuinely compulsive and feels cult-like, the exact (and i really mean *exact*) same behavior can be observed among religious fundamentalists, the populace of fascist nations and, well, cults.
@@Hoichael It's somewhat inappropriate to harp at length about Toriyama's mistakes in light of his passing. It's also EXTREMELY inappropriate to give a series like Dragon Ball a glowing recommendation and outright tell people they should try reading it without giving fair acknowledgement of those issues. If I'm going to recommend people read a series that will display overt sexism and blackface to them, then I'm going to mention those aspects. Because people have a right to know that they will be exposed to those things if they read it. And it's irresponsible to spread these things without acknowledgement. Even many classic Looney Tunes cartoons display a warning that there is dated, racist imagery within them that is a product of the time.
This is what people who complain about virtue signaling and call it "cult-like" don't understand. There is actual harm caused to others by exposure to racist tropes and misogynistic humor, both on an individual level and through the spread and continued normalization of such things. But acknowledging that requires empathy for others. If you lack that, then you don't even understand why someone would act out of empathy in the first place, and assume that others act of self-interest to "look good" because it's the only thing you know.
@@Werb I'm not "calling it cult-like", it is cult-like. The parallels are overt and measurable. Don't get me wrong though, i know you're trying to do the right thing, i just think you're wrong about what the right thing is. So wrong in fact that the mindset you're advocating actually results in additional harm done to the very people you seek to protect.
The way you're approaching these problematic elements puts them on a pedestal they don't deserve, imbuing them with immense weight and power. Yes, imbuing, these qualities are not inherent. It's all a matter of mindset and emmanuelmondesir8677's comment above is a perfect illustration of that. How does this guy fit into your world view? Would you prefer him be harmed by these elements? Is it a bad thing that he isn't harmed by these elements, elements which will continue to exist in our world if we want them to or not? What if i told you that EVERYONE could think and feel like that, unharmed by the powers of evil, stripping evil of its power?
You're partaking in the opposite endeavour, the preservation of a climate which constantly reinforces the power of these elements. You're taking softballs and turn them into nukes. How exactly are we fighting the powers of bigotry, by supplying them ammunition?
Now, none of this is your fault. You're doing the best you can, acting according to the ethical standards of our times. Over the past decades progressivism has taken a bizarre turn for the worse and you're a victim of the resulting climate. A climate which has long moved past the foundational principle of empowering the weak. A climate which has moved on to replacing this maxim with a destructive fetishization of weakness. A climate where the weak are made weaker and the weapons of bigotry are empowered. It's surreal, frankly, and (un)fortunately neither you nor me have enough influence to change even the tiniest thing about it =)
I hate the art of Dragonball Z after the planet namek saga
I think now is more the time to appreciate when it was great, than point at where it wasn't. But yeah - as much as Toriyama's skills peaked at an incredible level, overwork and burnout definitely got to him as the years went on. It's a shame.
I do think the Buu arc deserves some credit. In my personal view, the Cell arc was where Toriyama was forcing himself the hardest, both narratively and artistically. But the Buu arc felt like he decided that if he was going to keep doing this, he was going to have fun. He wasn't drawing the way he did when he was younger, but he was still bringing in the creative heart.