No Other Anime Will Ever Emulate Dragon Balls Success

No Other Anime Will Ever Emulate Dragon Ball’s Success

The success of the Dragon Ball franchise has been nothing short of groundbreaking, and it’s unlikely any other anime will ever match it.

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No Other Anime Will Ever Emulate Dragon Balls Success

Dragon Ball is the unrivaled benchmark for anime success on an international level, and don’t expect that to change any time soon. The growth of Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball franchise is a remarkable story, with the Japanese author initially believing that his creation would be lucky to last a year. Constantly surprised by his ever-expanding readership, Toriyama evolved the Dragon Ball franchise from a manga to an anime, and after dominating in Japan, went on to achieve worldwide acclaim. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, Dragon Ball has only surged in popularity over more recent years, despite the end of the main series and long periods of inactivity. The most recent release, 2018’s Dragon Ball Super: Broly, performed beyond all expectations and proved the seemingly eternal appeal of Goku and his friends.

Because Dragon Ball is held in such high esteem, it’s often used as the yardstick to measure the success of other anime series, with everyone looking for the “next Dragon Ball.” The likes of Naruto and One Piece have come closest, but the former failed to crack the mainstream in the way Dragon Ball Z did and One Piece is a far bigger deal in Japan than in other territories. Measured in financial terms or by cultural impact, Dragon Ball remains the franchise to beat, but in the modern era, it’s highly unlikely any other property, existing or yet to come, will match Dragon Ball’s achievements.

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This is largely because, for many fans outside of Japan, Dragon Ball was their first; the gateway into a world of animation vastly different to what western audiences were accustomed to. Dragon Ball’s popularity in the U.S. and Europe began on cable TV, shortly before the widespread use of broadband made streaming videos online an hourly occurrence. Goku’s adventures were the first of their kind to have a measurable impact on western networks and exposed a generation of youngsters to an entirely new art form. Other, newer anime franchises might be more intelligent, more violent or more well-rounded, but it was through Dragon Ball that most fans outside of Japan discovered them, in an era where there was little else on TV to rival it.

No other anime series can ever share this honor of being the “first” for an entire generation. Thanks to contemporary technology, anime fans can now access entire catalogs of material at their fingertips, and can cherry-pick whatever appeals to them the most. Those who were too young to catch Dragon Ball during its TV heyday now have the choice to begin their anime journey wherever they choose. With so much competition and far greater accessibility, it’s unfeasible that another anime could gain the same level of traction and have the same cultural impact as Dragon Ball did in the 1990s and early 2000s. Goku opened that door, everyone else is just walking through it.

Of course, this begs the question of whether Dragon Ball would enjoy the same level of success if it were to debut today. As hard as it might be to admit, the answer is “probably not.” Compared to most modern anime productions, Dragon Ball can feel somewhat rudimentary in its storytelling, and the elongated fight scenes and quirky filler that appear charming through a nostalgic lens would probably just annoy viewers in 2020, turning them onto one of the hundreds of other shows now available in a few clicks. Fortunately for Goku, Dragon Ball was the first of its kind; an imperfect but pioneering introduction to anime that worked its way into western hearts at a time when anime was largely ignored. No matter how bright the future of anime becomes, nothing will ever top that.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/dragon-ball-anime-success-never-beaten-reason/

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