Reception

Reception
Dragon Ball is one of the most popular manga series of its time, and it continues to enjoy high readership today. By 2000, more than 126 million copies of its tankōbon volumes had been sold in Japan alone.[4] By 2007, this number had grown to pass 150 million.[14] It is the "quintessential mainstream manga" driven by an unending story. Its immense popularity resulted in the series being continuously extended, first through the use of acrobatic devices that regularly kept the series from falling into the routine characters and story lines, then by having the central characters surpass death itself using miraculous devices. In Little Boy: The Art of Japan's Exploding Subculture Takashi Murakami notes that Dragon Ball's "never-ending cyclical narrative moves forward plausibly, seamlessly, and with great finesse."[4] Goku's journey and his ever growing strength resulted in the character winning "the admiration of young boys everywhere".[6] On several occasions the Dragonball anime series has topped Japan's DVD sales.[56][57]

In a survey conducted by Oricon in 2007 between 1,000 people, Goku, the main character of the franchise, ranked first place as the "Strongest Manga character of all time."[58] Manga artists, such as Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto and One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda, have stated that Goku inspired their series' main protagonists as well series structure.[59][60] When TV Asahi conducted an online poll for the top one hundred anime, the Dragon Ball series came in place twelve.[61] The first episode of Dragon Ball Kai earned a viewer ratings percentage of 11.3, ahead of One Piece and behind Crayon Shin-Chan.[62] Although following episodes had lower ratings, Kai was still maintained as one of the most viewed anime series from Japan.[63][64]

Animerica felt the series had "worldwide appeal" that uses dramatic pacing and over the top martial arts action to "maintain tension levels and keep a crippler crossface hold on the audience's attention spans".[5] Ridwan Khan from Animefringe.com commented on the manga to have a "chubby" art style but as the series continued it gets more refined with the characters leaner and more muscular. He also noted he preferred the manga versions of the series to their animated counterparts that makes the story slower and pointless.[65] Anime News Network praised the story and humor of the manga to be very good due conveying of all the characters's personalities. They also remarked Viz's translation to be one of the best ones of all the English editions of the series praising the lack of censor.[66] Rationalmagic.com remarked the first manga volume as "a superior humor title". They praised Goku's innocence and Bulma's insistence as one of the funniest parts of the series.[67] Writer Jason Thompson commented that the series popularity comes from a formula that Toriyama used in various story arcs from which he describes as "lots of martial arts, lots of training sequences, a few jokes." Yet, he noted that such formula became the model for other manga from the same genre such as Yu-Gi-Oh! or Naruto.[68]

The anime adaptations have also had different positive reviews. Dragon Ball Z was listed as the 78th best animated show in IGN's Top 100 Animated Series.[69] T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews considered the series characters are different from stereotypes characters and noted that they have much more development and in its sequels.[70] However, they criticized Dragon Ball Z for having long and repetitive fights, though they remarked the show has good characterization.[71] The storylines of Dragon Ball Z have been compared to Greek mythology.[72] Anime News Network considered Trunks's storyline to have an actual storyline with characters having more motivation than the common plot of the series.[73] IGN commented that Dragon Ball GT "is downright repellent" mentioning that the material and characters have lost their novelty and fun. They also criticized the character designs of Trunks and Vegeta as goofy.[74] Anime News Network has had negative comments of Dragon Ball GT. They mentioned the fights from the series are a very simple childish exercise and that many other anime were better. The plot of the series has also been criticized for giving a formula that was already used on its prequels.[75]