Dragon Ball

I’ve been watching anime since the 90s, but have a few very popular series that I missed out on for one reason or another. Finally planning on watching this major blind spot for me with this rewatch group: Dragon Ball! I think my grand total experience is half an episode I watched years ago, and I have no idea which series it was!

For some reason, the way Dragon Ball was advertised at the time and the Toriyama art never appealed to me. Interestingly, after watching a few episodes, I am totally sold on the Toriyama style. Seeing it in motion and context gives such a vibe that I’m struggling to describe. There’s something cozy, innocent-yet-dark, and beautiful about the way the show embraces its spirit of adventure, and super does not care if things don’t make sense or happen just because they’re cool or fun.

Again, I’m just starting this journey with almost no prior knowledge (only one or two major late story spoilers I unfortunately caught over the years…), so perhaps my feelings will change, but I’m loving the first three episodes.

A few more thoughts:

• I love how innocent Goku is. I have no idea why he is how he is. I’m sure there’ll be more backstory eventually.
• The frequent lewd thoughts, dialogue, and actions are a bit much, definitely verging on sexual assault at times. Master Roshi is hard to tolerate in particular. It’s saved by the framing of Goku’s absolute innocence and his completely different (or lack of) understanding of gender, nudity, boundaries, and autonomy. I’m sure this’ll be a recurring theme, but initial impressions feel like it was being edgy to be catchy and I’m not totally onboard how it’s being handled so far.
• This world is really weird. Dinosaurs, guns, motorcycles, anything-in-a-capsule, magic clouds, etc. Wow.
• I’m really surprised how many Dragon Balls they have already! I’m sure something will happy to scatter them or lose them or something, but it makes it pretty engaging to feel like they’ve already made so much progress so quickly.
• I was expecting more padding of episodes. I worry this’ll be a problem later on when it got more popular. I was kinda expecting My Hero Academia level pacing, which I found rough a lot of the time.

I super appreciate how everybody is being very careful about spoilers in this thread. I know very little and would prefer to keep as limited as possible to enjoy it fresh. Thanks y’all!