No Right Answer: Best/Worst Anime Ever

Firefilm

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Best/Worst Anime Ever

It's Thanksgiving, and that can only mean one thing; No one's watching. Besides getting naked, our favorite thing to do when no one's watching is let Chris ramble by himself about Dragon Ball Z!

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Scarim Coral

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Oct 29, 2010
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Couldn't we just settle that it was "ok" or "average" anime at the most?

I mean sure as you said, the plot and characters were at time questionable at best but none the less it made a huge impact to those kids (when the manga was release )that become some well known mangaka today and to some of us audiences when watching it.

As for me yeah sure I was blown away when it was first shown in the UK to the point that during PE lesson, all of us were talking about it when getting change but none the less these days it's at the bottom when it come to my favourite anime now I have been given wide range of animes to watched. Regradless Goku is still one of my favourite characters of all time.
 

Jacked Assassin

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Jun 4, 2010
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If you have to be over dramatic about it, its the worst Anime ever. Because even during the Freeza Saga it was ruined by a lot of filler where Goku had to fight all these minions just to get more powerful. If Freeza was scared of Saiyons enough to destroy Namek then he should've just killed the remaining Saiyons when they were still weak.

But yeah I'm willing to throw that logic out the window as long as Dragonball Z ended after that. But it didn't & what turn into something enjoyable ended up a chore. I just stopped watching Dragonball Z after The Cell Saga. Because there was no way I was going to have any further obligation to this series.

_

On the other hand a $9,000 auction bid on eBay was my best idea ever after getting auction sniped on a previous auction I would've won.
 

Aptspire

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It is in between, however.
Neither best nor worst.
I'd say Jin-Roh or Cowboy Bebop are the best ones (because unlike others, they're done, a complete story.)
Worst? Hard to say. There's some early, 90's and recent stuff that was really dreadful. (Pupa and Glasslip come to mind as the recent ones.)
 

Ikajo

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It was actually the Dragonball manga that got me into the manga in the first place. It quite literately changed my life. If not for Dragonball I wouldn't have become interested in martial arts, studied Japanese or travel to Japan. My drawing style changed and my interest increased. Even today the series hold a special place in my heart. Vegeta remain one of my favourite characters ever.
As to the anime. Living in Sweden and this being before Youtube it took years before I saw more then random episodes. The original anime is horribly long due to fillers and the English dub is just awful. I still like to watch some of the episodes in a random way sometimes. Other than that I rather watch Dragonball Kai.

Also...the basic rule of Shounen manga in the 80s-90s was to never allow the main character to die. That just didn't happen! Dragonball got away with it because they came back to life again.
 

Luther Strode

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For me actually best anime ever. Quite slow but they fixed it in Kai. Also I just get in love with it at the time after 1st episode of original first saga Dragon Ball. So funny and show character became stronger and stronger and had purpose in it.
 

crazygameguy4ever

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when i saw the title of best/worst anime ever i assumed they would talk about the best anime ever which is Bleach and the worst anime ever, Attack on titan.. but dragon ball z? it's not very good from what little I've seen.. maybe you can call it average at best
 

TheYeIIowDucK

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Mar 22, 2011
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"No one's gonna watch this, even less than they watch normally"

Awww, I watch you guys! This is my second favorite Escapist thing after Zero Punctuation!
 

Scars Unseen

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I wouldn't say that DBZ is the worst anime ever. Because there is no Tsukihime anime.
 

RandV80

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Haha these solo 'debates' are awesome, loved last years too.

With DBZ though while you said it's a Japanese/Eastern thing to slow things down, while that may be true in some case for the anime it had a whole lot to do with trying to fit an 18 page manga chapter into a 20 minute anime episode and it just doesn't work. From what I can tell you need about 50 comic pages to make a complete 20 minute animation. This leaves the anime producers scrambling to find ways to stretch things out and delay delay delay! All the long running series that follow a weekly manga have this problem.
 

Kenjitsuka

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There's Kai for revisiting all the great moments, without the bullshit filler.
Besides, I love re-reading my Dutch Dragonball manga. It took 7.5 years for it to come out in total, but it's soooo awesome!

And the thing about the tonal shift... that's NATURAL, since Goku is grown up.
We make a big leap in time, and he get's older and a family to protect.
That is good development, right there!

The Freeza retcon *is* silly, but just watch all the stuff after that -that's not filler for TV- and anyone will agree that was a good call. And I found it great that Buu was a return to the funny roots, as an ending to the epic journey.

In other news; Chris: How good was Battle of Gods?
FINALLY Toriyama takes the reigns again, and another movie by him is being made.... :D

So yeah, maybe not best ever, because of the filler.
But Naruto's FLIPPING filler is the worst. Or Bleach for the same reason.
One of them is definitely the worst...
 

PunkRex

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I grew up with Toonami and my sister and I watched a lot of Dragonball Z growing up but we never really watched it for the fights which we thought were kinda boring scream fests with WAY to much talking, we watched it for the cool characters and the relationships between them.

Now I'm older and I'm reading the manga, I haven't got that far but it seems really odd to me how they took something that was essentially Adventure Time and turned it into this oh so serious fight drama.

Not to mention the power creep is beyond ridiculous and this silly need to one up themselves every time has had a serious effect on modern Shounen series, each one feeling the need to push characters higher and higher to the point where they can't even see the foundations of their poxy premise any more!
 

Firefilm

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TheYeIIowDucK said:
"No one's gonna watch this, even less than they watch normally"

Awww, I watch you guys! This is my second favorite Escapist thing after Zero Punctuation!
Aww, thanks. Self-deprecating humor is kind of our thing, but we definitely love hearing that the fans enjoy what we do. Thanks, and have a great Thanksgiving. If you don't live in the US, have a great Thursday?
 

SilverUchiha

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This anime WAS the best anime at the time of its release. Back then, America really hadn't dipped into the anime market much and it was our first foray into that culture. We had nothing else to really compare it to and the uniqueness of it was what helped it come to life. At the time, it was really good.

But as of 2014 (obviously sooner, but at the time writing) I would say that while it isn't the "WORST" anime, it's clearly something I would happily label as a "BAD" anime. Or, to be less callous to it, it's "Junk Food" anime. It's anime that really has not plot or substance and has the most bare-bones story in existence to deliver mindless, nonsensical action. Other anime have copied this formula but added more story and have done SO MUCH BETTER (say what you will, but I'd say Naruto is our modern-day DBZ and I prefer that so much more than DBZ).

And there have been so many anime since then that have just done the job better. RuroKen added more story and having more authentic Japanese-cultural aspects going on. Pokemon is probably just as big, if not bigger, and continues to make NEW content every year regardless of quality but it still has an audience or it would have stopped by now. Death Note removed most of the action entirely to focus on plot and I hold it up as one of the best anime ever of all time.

DBZ is, to me, nothing but a jumping off point. Those who still love it despite the fact it really was an empty filler of a show are more than likely looking back through their rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and ignoring all the glaring issues the series had. And while I don't like the series, I greatly respect its existence because without it, it's hard to say if anime would have ever become popular in the west. Or, if it did, what shape that popularity and fandom would have taken. But ignoring the cultural significance of it and focusing on just the content of the show itself, it's not good and many shows have done it what it does, but better.
 

Rowan93

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Aug 25, 2011
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Obviously, the best anime of all time is Mars of Destruction.
And the worst is The Tatami Galaxy
 

ciancon

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Nov 27, 2009
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I don;t know about Dragon Ball Z, but that episode was definitely one of the best No Right Answers!
Kinda disappointed that it didn't end with Chris chugging some water whilst simultaneuosly trying to argue either side.

PS Got distracted halfway through the episode by the alphabetical order of the vhs tapes, congrats.
 

Simple logic

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Nov 22, 2013
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Forget Dragon Ball Z. Samurai Jack all the way! Best anime ever. Great slow nature shot, great action, and awesome stories. Buuuuttttttt if you want an opinion on Dragon Ball series I will say this. It is not worth the time devoted to even think about it.
 

EbonBehelit

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Oct 19, 2010
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This video seemed to boil down to my own opinions on the matter - Dragonball was an amazing show, but Z took out most of the whimsical fun and amplified the fights so far that they actually became boring to watch.

Even so, as a kid me and my friends ADORED DBZ. The manga as a whole has a very impressive legacy, and was the best-selling manga of all time until One Piece took it's spot at the top a few years back. Quite deservedly too, since imho One Piece is the only one of the 'Big Three' to properly capture it's predecessor's spirit of adventure: Naruto made the exact same mistakes Dragonball did when it went into Shippuden, and Bleach totally lost the goddamn plot after only a single season.
 

ccggenius12

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Simple logic said:
Forget Dragon Ball Z. Samurai Jack all the way! Best anime ever. Great slow nature shot, great action, and awesome stories. Buuuuttttttt if you want an opinion on Dragon Ball series I will say this. It is not worth the time devoted to even think about it.
Please explain to me how a word whose definition is "cartoon made in Japan by the Japanese" can be used to accurately describe an American cartoon, excepting when it's preceded by the words "is not".

OT: Those pauses weren't for artistic reasons, they were so they wouldn't get ahead of the source material.
"Best" in this context is entirely subjective, but I'll say that it's not my favorite, and thus I would personally not consider it best. Same for worst. There is some truly horrible fanservice pandering that definitely sits on a lower rung on the totem pole. I can't state a least favorite, but as favorites go, Lupin III has been getting new content every year since it launched in the '70s, it must be doing something right. Not bad for a series that started as a knockoff of an established series of French novels.