Dragon Ball

[AndyC]

The most surprising thing about Dragonball Z, for me, is not so much the level of violence, but the fact that it's marketed directly to kids. There seems to be an assumption on the part of a lot of people, broadcasters and parents, that if it's animated, it must be for kids. In Canada, DBZ is carried by YTV, a network geared mainly to kids, and it has appeared in prime-time and afterschool slots. YTV is noted for running Beast Wars under the title 'Beasties,' and War Planets as 'Shadow Raiders' because they apparently can't have 'war' in the title. The content is apparently not so important. The violence on DBZ is not really that severe for an adult to watch, especially after the obvious editing, but it's not appropriate for small kids, in my opinion.

Actually, the editing for television consists mainly of taking out the most severe instances of dismemberment, changing the demons' "HELL" t-shirts to HFIL (Home for Infinite Losers) and saying that everyone who was blown up before our eyes was "sent to another dimension." I don't know if this is just something YTV requires, or whether this version is aired everywhere. It reminds me of the old Star Blazers episodes, where any enemy soldiers who get blown away are very plainly referred to as robots. Bulls**t. It doesn't fool anyone, and it's anoying.

I used to like DBZ. It has a way of sucking a viewer in, and it's interesting for a while. The reason I stopped watching was that it requires such an investment of time. I just couldn't spare the time every day to see how things turned out. I began to get tired of the show during all of the lead up to the fight with Frieza, and was completely sick of it by the end of the fight with Frieza. Five minutes of battle can be made to last for half a dozen episodes, depending on the circumstances. Remember when Goku was going to land in "20 minutes?" I got tired of hearing that, for example, Namek was going to explode in five minutes and then actually seeing it sometime the following week. Too many episodes went absolutely nowhere, and it just took too long for a story to progress. It was all about the story arc, with nothing particularly special in the individual episodes. There is also way too much filler, in the form of irrelevant side trips, and scenes of minor characters reacting to the battles. I won't even go into the repetition. I tried to watch the Cell saga, but eventually just said to Hell (HFIL?) with it. After a while, you realize you're being jerked around by a cartoon, and you tune out.

Compare this to Star Blazers, which had a good story arc, as well as interesting stand-alone plots for each episode. An important obstacle was overcome in each episode and progress was shown. Star Blazers is still my favourite after 20 years.

[Flangepart]

Looks like i'm not the only one who hasen't got a continuing "Dragon Ballz jones". As Andy C said, its hard to keep up with a show as it is, and if the show makes it unnessarily hard, it just won't float the barge. I've never seen the Patlabor T.V. series, but the two movies realy work for me. The "Snow falling on Tokyo " scene, during the tense military stand off in the second film, is what i like about Anime's style. Great use of music,too. I knew the movies were based on T.V. shows, but the plots drew me in ,and i could get behind Ota's hotheadedness, and Capt. Goto's skill as a manager without too much trouble. What can i say, it worked for me. Same with Macross Plus. Great visuals, great music.