I like many many many people here grew up with the Dragon Ball Series as one of my first anime experiences. As a child I had nothing but love for it and thought Goku and his pales were the coolest strongest best characters ever. However as I kept aging , seeing other frankly better written anime and having deeper more adult experiences I learned how false this was or at least how false it was for me. The series is terribly written and at this point mostly a cash cow with little to no merit. I'll explain the main reasons why I grew to feel this way here.

You want the biggest reason why as I got older I grew to hate the Dragon Ball franchise? I'll gladly give you it then , it's because they throw characters away. If you aren't a saiyan ect you get thrown away most of the time. Once your importance or more so your " power level " reaches it's peak you are thrown off the sidelines with at most the hope of becoming a funny comedic character at worst being written out of the series.

No one got this treatment worse than Yamcha. Yamcha is probably the genuinely nicest guy out of Son Goku's pales and he was just a nice fun guy who wanted to get married and have a family. He not only got that taken away but he was forced to become a joke character. Never forgot that he defeated the Saibamen in battle but it kamikazee him and they both died. Krillin admitted NONE OF THE OTHERS would have survived that move either. He was NEVER weak ... until the creators and more importantly the fans MADE HIM weak. In the past yeah he was not exactly the strongest of Goku's friends but he was never weak in fact he was one of the strongest fighters on the earth and he showed it a lot. Filler even had him beating the piss out of Recoome ect among many other feats.

It wouldn't last though. Eventually due to immense fan backlash and hate and contempt for the character as well as his waxing role in the series after Vegeta and Bulma get together he was pushed further and further onto the sidelines until they actually made him a weakling who could not beat any even remotely competent fighter. Culminating an the insulting gag Manga " That time I got reincarnated as Yamcha " in which a youth gets reincarnated as Yamcha but since he;s not Yamcha he gets to be strong. The joke is he gets reincarnated as the weakest most pathetic most worthless character in the series but manages to become strong. Despite how it seems its not an inspiring or beautiful message it;s just a way to take a steaming dump on a character who lost his limelight and was once considered one of Toriyama's favorite now became a complete 100% gag character.

This behavior has been the status quo for a long time now for Yamcha. With scenes like him falling during the baseball game in Super mimicking his " humiliating " pose when he died against the Saibamen. The fact that he was strong at the time , the fact that all the other heroes would have died from that attack is completely ignored and pushed to the sied simply to mock and humiliate him eve further. To me this is a great representation of the lack of heart and soul in Toriyama's writing as it gets staler and staler. When a character is not popular any more they are tossed aside and literally pushed into the garbage.

Krillin or " Kuririn " was lucky. He was Goku's best friend so he would always be important to the plot and he got a very strong wife which would further ensure his status as " important " even if he was not the strongest. Yamcha however was the " loser " who got dumped for the strong cool Vegeta a hip fan favorite so he had to go ... either that or he had to become the biggest laughing stock in the entire franchise. In a way he was dealt both blows. His importance was reduced to zero and his skills and power was reduced bellow zero. He became a pure and simple joke character with nothing going for him other than his baseball career. They could not even throw him a bone and let him get Krillin's old love interest Maron who was attracted to him in the past
I know she's " filler " but she could still easily be accepted into further instalments of the anime version ) , they gave him nothing ultimately. That is nothing except the honor of being the butt of just about every joke and insult imagainable.

Anyway that's enough about how they destroyed a wonderful character .... I want to talk about another issue with the series. The Secondary problem with Dragon ball is the power levels. This actually links back to what I was talking about earlier about how certain characters get thrown away though. It just so happens the less popular characters magically end up being weaker ... at least for the most part anyway. How convenient that for so long everyone who wasn't a saiyan was nearly totally useless. Unlike more well written anime everything in dragon ball comes back to power levels. It doesn't matter how strange or how unique or devastating an ability is as long as the other opponents power level is higher he or she will win every single time no matter what literally period full stop.

Now if you ask me this will make for some very very boring fights. The fights in Dragon Ball after Frieza had become so stale , so power level based , so typical and so predictable it just started to lose any interest whatsoever. Krillin: " Did we get him? " the villain is hidden in a cloud of smoke as the other characters wonder if they killed him before he walks out of the smoke completely unharmed and proceeds to defeat every last one of them. Such became the status quo. When nothing matters except power levels the battles become soulless and mindless instead of intense , beautiful and moving struggles the battles become tedious pathetically written dribble that repeats on a continuous loop. This isn't interesting and it doesn't do anything except turn my stomach in disgust and abject boredom.

The epitome of this problem is shown in Future Trunks final battle with Zamasu in which his victory is cut short because Zamasu has become vaper. That's right he became vaper! VAPER! So what do they do you might ask .. why bring in a new guy with a higher power level and he cleans things up nicely. The struggle and beauty of Trunk's victory is taken away. He used all the feelings of the earthlings who had suffered for so many years at the hands of the androids and others and used the power of their souls and feelings to win but in the end it meant .... NOTHING! In the end his struggle is NOTHING and he is humiliated and forced to step aside while a new character cleans house with the flick of his wrist. This scene right here was the final nail in the coffin for Dragon Ball for me and it killed nearly any and all love I have towards the franchise. For years I had been growing steadily angrier and angrier at how the series had been going and the direction it was taking but this was the very end for me and I buried it that night and locked it out of my heart. I was done and there was no turning back ... for me Dragon Ball had died that night but it was not so much that it had died but that I had finally completely outgrown any enjoyment of it whatsoever.

My third and final complaint with Dragon Ball which I will cover a bit more briefly than the above is how death has no weight for these characters. In other anime character deaths are almost always final and can be a heartbreaking tragic yet beautiful send off for characters we've come to truly love as if they were our own friends and family in some cases. In dragon ball however death is as simple as " oh Piccolo died? Well no problem we can just wish him back! How cool is that? lol. " Something as final and as irrevocable as death has become the equivalent of dying in a video game. You died? Don't worry you save the game just restart from that point. Character deaths which are the cornerstone of emotions of loss and sorrow in fiction has been reduced to a fun little game or a slight inconvenience at best.

Let it sink in how truly soulless this is! Death itself has been negated to all but meaningless and is now just a small inconvenience. Meanwhile in billions upon billions of other stories ( as well as our own lives ! ( well written lovable characters and our own loved ones are dying and being lost! They are moving our hearts as well as breaking them and making us look deep within ourselves at what truly makes us tick and what truly makes us human. There is one single thing of importance in this world and that is love and all it's forms and to lose a loved one is the most painful experience imaginable. The sorrow of loss never goes away and that pain remains in the heart as scars of sadness and despair that can both make us stronger and destroy us. To demote that to a mere inconvenience is truly soulless and it is an example of a childish brainless mind that only cares about making money and the status quo of keeping the power level induced fights rolling.

So in conclusion these are my issues and complaints with a series I loved in my youth but grew to hate with intensity in adulthood. If you enjoy the series then good for you! Don't give me spam or hate or any bullshit or toxicity. Simply express your opinions intelligently and with maturity if you wish to. If you hate the series like I do you have my virtual pat on the back lol. Wishing you happiness and love .... peace out readers!