Is Dragonball's Story As Simple And Stupid As People Make It Out To Be?

up through the Freiza saga, its not bad. not a timeless piece of literature, but not trash.

after Freiza, things quickly decline. you know when a time traveling teenage son of two characters who dont even like each other shows up, your story has jumped the shark.

then Toriyama spends most of the Cell saga, setting up Gohan as the future saviour, only to completely change his mind then after the fact. lol.

then comes the Buu saga where the primary thing is fusions two characters together into one to make more powerful ones via dancing...or earings.. at that point, he needed to put down the bong.

Well the show ain't rocket science.

Even then after spending all that time on fusions Buu was beaten by.... Not a fusion. Just Goku with Vegeta running interference. The entire fusion arc could be cut out and we'd have lost nothing.

As for the OP, that is basically the show's plot every time, yah. However that explanation is extremely simplified and makes it sound a lot less interesting than it actually is.

@fallschirmjager: most of the cell saga?

That's a good one, unless you're talking about the cell games specifically

DBZ's plot is fairly straightforward, however the story itself was never known as DBZ's main attraction. Never was, never will be. The crazy fights were what drew people to the anime; it does a phenomenal job at hyping up its fights. The reason why the series may seem to decline after a certain point is because Toriyama actually intended to end the series several different times, but then ended up having to figure out a way to keep the story going with a new saga after he changed his mind about the decision.

Anyways, my point is that if you're going to watch DBZ, don't go into it expecting to witness some breathtaking story that's going to drop your jaw and leave you absolutely stunned. Just enjoy it for what it is.

Dragonball is basically anime's equivalence of hack and slash games. It's mindlessly fun for those who enjoy it but don't expect too much complexity from it. There are complex mangas like Death Note or Liar's Games out there that, so not every anime is like that. That's part of the fun though, anime is so different that there are moe anime for neckbeards and typical fighting shounen for young children like Naruto and One Piece. There is something for everyone.

Simmmpleeee kind of world.

Pilasy:La Voix d'un homme