The Dragon Ball series has proven to be so successful that the franchise has since expanded from manga and anime to original movies and video games. It even spawned its own live-action film, which we’ll all pretend never happened. Starting from humble beginnings as something of a comedy adventure in the same vein as Journey to the West, Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball transformed the series into a full scale battle manga. Though the series was never known for its complex plot or dedication to continuity, it gained worldwide attention thanks to the show’s usage of martial arts and fighting techniques. When Toriyama transitioned to Dragon Ball Z, the series took on a far more serious tone, and the focus of the show shifted away from martial arts to power attacks and power-ups.
Looking back on the show, it’s clear that Toriyama and Toei Animation got away with a lot more than they probably should have over the years. While there are many plot points and continuity mistakes that don’t make sense, there are far more problematic elements strewn throughout the entirety of the series. No one said that Dragon Ball was ever perfect, but it’s startling to see how different groups of people are portrayed and treated. It’s also hard to ignore some of the dumber moments from the series that apparently everyone was ok with. It’s time to at least call out Toriyama and Toei Animation for everything they have done over the span of several decades.
24 Did No One See How Weird This Was?
In Dragon Ball, General Blue is an adversary of Goku’s who is a big part of the Red Ribbon Army saga. His whole schtick, though, is that he cares about his appearance a lot, seems to be incredibly vain, and is disgusted by the appearance of Bulma. Basically the running joke is that he is gay and also happens to be a very bad person.
Depicting a gay man as a villain is certainly not a good look, but that’s just surface-level stuff in the end.
Apparently General Blue is also attracted to those who are young. In the original Japanese version of the anime, it is originally hinted that Blue finds Obotchaman to be attractive. Considering he’s an android child, it’s an incredibly offensive way to depict a gay man.
23 A New Kind Of Problem
Goku has an enormous appetite, so it’s no surprise that he finds ways to cook and eat some of the biggest animals around. However, the weird part of the Dragon Ball world is that dinosaurs and anthropomorphic animals exist, and sometimes these guys become pray for a hungry Saiyan boy. It starts to cross a line between hunting and actual crimes against animalkind.
At times, Goku has been seen attacking and cooking wolves, boiling a talking octopus with his Kamehameha Wave, and eating roasted pig in front of Oolong. Yajirobe cooks up a giant dragon, which have definitely been established to be capable of human speech. Even Gohan gets in on the act when he cooks up a dinosaur’s tail. You have to wonder if there are any animal activists in this universe.
22 This Was Just One Big Headache
If you’re going to introduce time travel into your story, you have to take the time to get it right, otherwise it is going to be a gigantic mess. Of course, Toriyama didn’t even bother to make heads or tails of the whole Trunks time travel story, so we’re left with one giant headache if you want to try and make sense of everything that happens during the Cell Saga.
Basically, it all becomes one wheel of time.
Unable to defeat the androids of the future, Trunks travels to the present day to warn the heroes. He eventually becomes strong enough to destroy 17 and 18 in his own time, but the Cell of that timeline emerges and takes his time machine back to the present to when they are still around. Some have speculated that several alternate timelines exist in order to make this all possible.
21 Someone Call Social Services
Since the very beginning of Dragon Ball Z, Goku and Chi-Chi treated their son Gohan terribly. For some reason, at the age of four, it was deemed to be a good idea to allow Piccolo to train the child alone in the woods, and then pit him against two superpowered villains. After that, he was sent out into the depth of space at the tender age of 5, and everyone thought it was no big deal.
Sure, Goku had adventures when he was young, but he was already 12 years old when he first met Bulma. Meanwhile, Gohan was intensively trained to become the savior of the Earth at just 11 years old. It’s no wonder he became a weirdo called the Great Saiyaman and then completely quit fighting. After all that trauma, he probably had to get away from it all.
20 Why Were They Friends With Them Again?
Very few men in the Dragon Ball series treat women well, but no one is as bad as Master Roshi. His unrepentant annoyance of Bulma, Chi-Chi, Launch, and any woman within arms reach of him seems like it should have ostracized him from the rest of the Z Fighters.
The surprising thing is that the group actively uses his home as their hangout spot even despite his actions.
The same goes for Oolong, who was taking women by the time Goku and friends met him. It’s good to see the women unafraid to defend themselves from these predator, but why aren’t any of the men speaking up in defense. You would think that Vegeta would have had a talk with him by now, if Goku wasn’t going to say anything.
19 Apparently This Is No Big Deal
No one blinks an eye when entire races of people are easily wiped from existence. We know that Frieza takes out most of the Saiyans, but it doesn’t really stop there. Everyone on Namek is basically eliminated, then Buu shows up, takes out everyone on Earth, and then blows up the planet. It’s all no big deal because everything can just be wished back with the Dragon Balls.
Perhaps that’s why it all feels like no big deal. When every tragedy can be washed away by a simple wish, nothing is really that upsetting. Then again, the gang also seems to have no real problem eliminating entire realities from existence. Goku and friends fight for the survival of their universe, but no one seems to react in any way when their opponents are erased. Apparently no one has emotions.
18 Please Don’t Do That Ever Again
Starting out as a comedy series, Dragon Ball includes a lot of lewd humor that has no place in a cartoon for kids. One recurring jokes of the series is that Krillin doesn’t have a nose, which he forgets until someone mentions. It’s obvious he does have a nose, but Toriyama decided not to draw it, and then made it into a running joke.
It has resulted in some crass comedy.
During the Martial Arts Tournament, Krillin faces Bacterian, who uses his awful body odor as a weapon. There is a scene where he uses a special technique, where he digs around in his underwear for some really awful stink. Do we really want to know what he’s doing down there? And what about the time Bulma kept that jewel in her bathing suit? Krillin was smelling that thing for a long time, which is kind of gross.
17 She Was Out Of Control
When we first meet Bulma, she’s just a teenager exploring the open world for the first time, and like many teenagers, she seems interested in exploring what she can get away with as a young woman. She teases Roshi, Yamcha, and many other men over the span of her adventures in Dragon Ball. She even tries to manipulate Goku and General Blue, who both reject her for different reasons.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with a young woman exploring these avenues, but it’s good to see that she settles down by the time Dragon Ball Z rolls around. The wild time of her youth is over by then, and she’s looking to settle down with a man. Since Yamcha apparently can’t handle her, she goes off and finds comfort in Vegeta, which is just super weird.
16 This Show Was Kind Of Gross
Dragon Ball Z characters have suffered some nasty injuries, but no one has gone through as much bodily trauma as Frieza. During the fight on Namek, he had parts of his tail cut off on multiple occasions. Then, he accidentally gets sliced by his own attack, which is absolutely gross. Looking at him hovering around with no legs is also kind of disturbing.
He may have survived the explosion of the planet, but his body was a complete wreck floating out in space.
They had to build him a cyborg body just to bring him back to working order. He then flew all the way to Earth just so Future Trunks can show up and turn his body into pieces. When he’s brought back to life in Resurrection F, his minions have to collect those pieces too!
15 The Treatment Of Women
It should come as no surprise that a manga and anime aimed at boys, would neglect the women who appear in it. However, the Dragon Ball franchise takes things to a whole new level without women are treated. This goes beyond Bulma getting turned into a carrot, and even all those times Master Roshi harassed her into showing off the goods.
Perhaps one of the worst displays of this was during the Buu Saga when Videl fought Spopovich in the martial arts tournament. Her opponent outclassed her, but instead of simply defeating her, he decided to repeatedly attack Videl right there in the ring. It was a criminal display of pure evil. Then, in Dragon Ball Super, Beerus showed up and actually hit Bulma, and then Goku turned it into a joke!
14 Who Is Really To Blame?
The Dragon Ball franchise has Goku fighting some of the baddest dudes in the universe, but it usually skips over the fact that most of the threats were his fault to begin with. Instead of allowing his son to defeat Cell, he gives the villain a senzu bean to make it a fair fight. As a result, several characters perish and Goku is forced to sacrifice himself.
In the Buu Saga, a Super Saiyan 3 Goku doesn’t fight very hard against Super Buu because of Gotenks.
However, that doesn’t really work out, does it? Even in Dragon Ball Super, Goku is kind of to blame for the whole tournament to erase realities thing. It seems that though he is a hero, his own thrill seeking causes most of the problems he and his friends have to face.
13 There Is No Such Thing As Continuity
The Dragon Ball series suffers from a lot of continuity problems, especially when it hits Dragon Ball Z. Akira Toriyama introduced a lot of new concepts that he just wasn’t able to keep straight over the years. Gohan has a tail, while Goten and Trunks don’t because he simply forgot about them. He also forgot about the character Launch, which is why she completely disappears.
What’s worse is the fact that Super Saiyan 3 only exists because he thought it was Super Saiyan 2. That’s why Goku simply skips a stage in his Super Saiyan transformations. The series has a lot of rules and regulations, but Toriayama has admitted that he doesn’t write anything down, so you can imagine it’s easy to forget these things over the span of 20-30 years.
12 They Call This A Kid’s Show?
Dragon Ball Z was hugely popular among children and teenagers, but some of the violence was a little over the top for an after school cartoon. It’s not even the fact that people are getting punched a lot, it’s more of the horror elements that are brought in during the Cell and Buu Sagas that might have had kids covering their eyes with fear.
When Cell first arrives on the scene in his imperfect form, he uses his tail to feed off innocent victims.
It actually melts them and it is absolutely horrifying. Meanwhile, Buu has the power to enter someone’s body and make them explode. He also turns them into food and eats them. Did no one catch the fact that he made made his house out of people?
11 This Cameo Was Not Needed
In the movie Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn, the evil demon Janemba unleashes disorder within Other World, resulting in villains escaping back to Earth. This means we see many former enemies from the Dragon Ball series return to the land of the living, including the likes of Frieza and his army of space villains.
There is one bad guy that we probably didn’t need to see, though.
Among those who invade Earth is a character referred to only as The Dictator, who is very clearly a caricature of Hitler. He is fought by Goten and Trunks, who manage to defeat him relatively easily once they fuse into Gotenks. However, due to his controversial inclusion in the movie, he was removed from several international versions of the film. Was this really necessary?
10 People Were Unhappy About This
Fans of Dragon Ball Z were happy to see a return to the franchise with a new animated series called Dragon Ball Super. The show would ignore what had come in Dragon Ball GT and planned to continue right where the Buu Saga left off 20 years before. The show debuted, and everyone loved what was being done, until the fifth episode debuted in 2015.
During the God of Destruction Beerus Saga, Goku fights the deity and is completely outmatched. In the episode “The Ultimate Fight on King Kai’s Planet! Goku vs. the God of Destruction Beerus,” the animation quality falls considerably, to the point where it looked worse than some fan drawings. The animation was improved for the DVD release, but people were not happy with the initial product.
9 They Really Missed A Golden Opportunity Here
As a Shōnen manga, it makes sense that the Dragon Ball franchise would be very male-focused. The series has become such a worldwide phenomenon, though, that you would think those in charge would want to be more inclusive and introduce female Super Saiyans at some point.
It was kind of a tragedy that the first female Saiyan introduced was Pan, and she never managed to go Super Saiyan.
In fact, the only way the series was able to introduce female Super Saiyans was through the direct influence of Toei Animation. When creating Dragon Ball Super, the creators pitched the idea to Toriyama, who then approved and designed Kale and Caulifla in the Universal Survival Saga. That took way too long to happen, and it’s disappointing that they are merely alternate universe versions.
8 What Is A Loving Relationship?
It shouldn’t be surprising that an anime franchise filled with meatheads who love to fight each other don’t seem to be the best husbands. Still, it’s shocking how bad Goku and Vegeta are when they constantly seem to be abandoning their spouses in order to train more, harness new abilities, and get into the next big fight. At some point they may need to learn all about what we call divorce.
Goku, who seems to be the world’s biggest buffoon, even as an adult, clearly doesn’t understand basic human interactions, like going on a date, getting married, and having children. Vegeta, on the other hand, just straight up abandons Bulma after she has Trunks. It takes an extremely long time for him to come around and actually be a decent person. Big of him.
7 The Official Timeline Is A Mess
Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z became so popular that it made too much sense not to create original animated spin-off films. The only problem was that many of the movies made between 1986 to 1996 don’t line up well with the events of the anime. The first film, Curse of the Blood Rubies, is an alternate telling of the beginning of the Dragon Ball franchise.
Not all the movies can be explained so easily, though.
Dead Zone actively contradicts with the beginning of Dragon Ball Z. Then, when you factor in the Garlic Jr. Saga, it’s hard to understand how this all makes sense. Other films seem to take place during specific parts of the anime, but it’s literally impossible to stuff that much action into small spaces of time, like the 10-day wait period before the Cell Games.
6 No One Seems To Care What He Did
A recurring theme in the Dragon Ball series is former enemies of Goku eventually become his friend following their defeat. It happened with Tien Shinhan and Piccolo after their debuts in Dragon Ball, and then much of Dragon Ball Z dealt with the redemption of Vegeta. However, it seems that fans and characters alike were quick to forget the many atrocities he committed.
Vegeta is significantly more evil than either Tien or Piccolo (the younger one) were when they were introduced. He hurt a lot of innocent people in his quest for power, and was responsible for many of the Z Fighters heading off to the afterlife. No one seemed to care when he wiped out an entire village on Namek, because everyone seemed to embrace him after that.
5 It’s A Crime What They Did To Him
Remember when Gohan was set up to take over as the hero of the series after he surpassed his father during the Cell Saga? Yeah, Akira Toriyama didn’t like writing him as the main character, so his backed things up during the Buu Saga and brought Goku back.
That’s all fine and good, but did he really have to turn Gohan into a complete joke in order to do it?
During his first time as the main character, Gohan became the Great Saiyaman, an over the top superhero identity that fans really didn’t enjoy. After that, he basically gave up fighting in favor of becoming a scholar. It wasn’t just enough that he stopped training, he also became significantly weaker because of it. While Goku and Vegeta got stronger, Gohan reverted significantly, though Dragon Ball Super did try to rectify this a bit.
