Dragon Ball is one of the most influential anime series of all time. The creators of One Piece, Bleach, and Fairy Tail all cited Akira Toriyama and Dragon Ball as their biggest inspiration, and so is Naruto. Naruto is the third best-selling manga of all time, with Dragon Ball in second place. They were both published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and they have been embodied in various video games.
However, Naruto had the benefit of learning from Dragon Ball's mistakes, which allowed it to become a famous anime. We're here today to explain why the Naruto series is better than the Dragon Ball saga. 👍 From the quality of the fights to the comparison between the main characters, here are the 15 reasons why Naruto is better than Dragon Ball.
One of the aspects that helped the series become popular 🔥 (at least initially) was the tactical nature of the fighting. The series was not about power levels. Instead, when it came to combat, intelligence took precedence over brute strength.
A character with weaker skills than his opponent could emerge victorious with an adapted strategy. This is why Shikamaruwas so beloved in character popularity polls, despite having a boring technique in combat. He used his wits to win battles and fans loved to see him outsmart his enemies. 🧠
The fight scenes in Dragon Ball Z were often visually exciting to watch, but the conclusion often boiled down to a determined level of strength long before the battle began. The battles of Dragon Ball Z boiled down to a specific formula of unnecessary punches and kicks, transformation sequences, and massive light beam attacks. ⚡ Dragon Ball Z's fights were often one-sided, which also made it less interesting. That's why the few tied fights (like Piccolo against C17 ) are still on our minds.
One of the main advantages of manga over western comics is that it has managed to reach a female audience. Even Marvel and DC still haven't been able to use the advertising power of their films to bring female audiences to their comics. Unlike Mangas, which have succeeded in conquering a female audience, 💄 whose size is close to that of the male audience.
Dragon Ball certainly has its fair share of female fans, but it came from a time when Weekly Shonen Jump was all about attracting male readers. That changed by the time Naruto arrived, as the Naruto Saga went out of its way to include elements that would be able to attract a female audience.
It seems that plan worked. In Naruto's case, they did so by including more romance and relationship teasing than you'd see in an average fight manga. This is why Naruto is the second biggest series on Fanfiction.net (after Harry Potter) because it inspires a new level of creativity in its fans. 🆕
You could argue that Akira Toriyama is a notoriously absent-minded person since this has been true throughout her career, as many characters and concepts in Dragon Ball ceased to be relevant from their first appearance in the first arc.
One of the most notable characters to disappear is Lunch, who never appeared in the Dragon Ball manga after the Saiyans arrived. ⚡ It's because Toriyama forgot that she existed. The people who worked on the anime managed to give her a few more passages, so she wasn't forgotten in the anime.
Naruto not only kept all of his main cast to the end, but he also managed to keep them relevant in combat. They all had the opportunity to shine during the arc of the world war. ⚔️ Naruto and Sasuke eventually managed to overtake the other characters, but that didn't make the others useless.
In the case of Dragon Ball Z, anyone who wasn't Saiyans was left in the dust and ceased to be relevant as anything other than a brief distraction.
Dragon Ball is anotherlicensed anime that has a terrible Hollywood adaptation. 📺 Dragonball Evolution turned Goku into a high school student who had to fight the evil Piccolo in a contemporary setting. The film was hated by the majority of people when it was released. In conclusion, Dragonball Evolution is just another failed adaptation of the Dragon Ball saga.
Akira Toriyama hasn't interacted with fans much since the end of Dragon Ball. But it seems even he couldn't hold his tongue out in the face of the Dragon ball Evolution adaptation. 👅
Naruto has yet to receive his Hollywood movie ... but it won't be long! Lionsgate is currently shooting a Naruto movie, starring Masashi Kishimoto on board as a producer. We can only hope that the failure of Ghost in the Shell will bring its production into question.
Goku was 13 when Dragon Ball started. The series followed him into adulthood, to the point where he became a grandfather. 👴 One of the most disturbing aspects of Dragon Ball Z is the fact that Gohan was pushed into the protagonist position at the age of 4 - Piccolo takes him up the mountain to train him for combat. Gohan was then pushed into a fight when he was not yet able to read or even count. What makes the situation worse is the fact that Gohan is traumatized by these experiences and spends most of these fights in tears. 😭 If you don't know Naruto yet, check out our blog: Who is Naruto.
The Cyborgs Saga introduced time travel to Dragon Ball Z. It came in two forms - via the Trunks time machine and via the Room of Spirit and Time. Trunks were able to go back in time to warn Goku's gang of the arrival of the Cyborgs 🤖 and Goku's death from heart disease.
As the story continued, Goku revealed the existence of the Hall of Spirit and Timeon Karin's Tower. It is a room in which time is accelerated and where 1 year corresponds to 24 hours outside of it. The Sayans were able to use this room to become stronger. 💪
Introducing time travel to a series is always a tricky suggestion. This usually raises the question of "why don't they use time travel to solve all their problems." This is something the Harry Potter franchise learned the hard way. Naruto never needed to time travel, so he managed to avoid these issues. ⌛
The importance of Dragon Ball Z cannot be understated when it comes to series that have helped popularize anime and manga in the West. He stands alongside Pokémon and Sailor Moon. The flip side is that the negative aspects of Dragon Ball Z have been associated with the anime and the manga as a whole.
Dragon Ball Z featured a lot of screaming and grunting, 📣 during the various fights. The climax was when Goku's voice actor Sean Schemmel passed out during a recording of Dragon Ball GT due to the amount of noise required when transforming Goku into Super Saiyan 4. The character's "cry as he transforms into Super Sayan" has become a stereotype associated with the anime as a whole. Fortunately, the licensed Naruto managed to escape this kind of heresy.
Dragon Ball was a weird series in that it seemed to change tone and genre from arc to arc. The story began as a fantasy adventure that parodied some aspects of Journey to the West, but, at the end of Dragon Ball, the Super Saiyans ⚡ had to face off against a genius who had existed for millennia.
The reason for these changes was because Akira Toriyama ✒️ invented everything over time, without any long-term plan. What makes this series so overwhelming is how easily it jumped between light adventure and brutality. This is especially true for Dragon Ball Z, where almost all of the main characters in the original series are killed while fighting the Saiyans in space.
Naruto has always managed to tie together moments of lightness and intense fighting throughout his journey. This means that those who started the series from the beginning have never been shocked by the evolution of the saga.
Naruto ended with a world at peace. Ninja villages have declared a ceasefire that appears to have remained in place for several decades. Technology had advanced, with the arrival of skyscrapers and computers in Konoha. The old Kages had also retired and left the world in the hands of the new generation.
The world of Dragon Ball Z never seemed to change by the events of history. Goku and his friends mainly dealt with the threats that ended the world and were never proactive in stopping them.
They were ready to allow Dr. Gero 🤖 to finish building his Cyborgs, as Goku wanted a real fight. Additionally, the Z-Fighters never received recognition for their actions, which allowed Hercules to land and gain recognition for supposedly stopping Cell. Goku and his friends certainly don't exist in the eyes of the world.
It's hard to deny that Naruto was a much bloodier series 🩸 than Dragon Ball. The characters were constantly cut by blades and dodged poison attacks. Many Shinobis were specializing in medical ninjutsu, which they used alongside (or in tandem) with their combat abilities. Only the most skilled ninjas could use their chakra to heal the wounds of others, which allowed many of them to survive.
Dragon Ball Z has tended to minimize injury inflicted during combat. This is because the characters never seemed too troubled by serious injuries. Ten shin han His arm was torn off against Nappa, but he could continue to fight.
There were also characters with powerful healing abilities - like Dende, but also Senzu Beans, which can heal someone on the verge of death in seconds. The resurrection abilities of the Dragon Balls increased this minimization of death and its long-term implications.
Dragon Ball featured several important women in its cast. The series could never have gone anywhere without Bulma and her inventions. 📻 However, there were hardly any female fighters in Dragon Ball except for the fill arcs and the movies, which weren't created by Akira Toriyama. Dragon Ball Super recently featured its first Super Saiyans, which took over twenty-five years to debut.
Naruto featured a good number of prominent female characters who appeared in positions of power and were equal to men in combat. Tsunade, Mei Terumi, and Kurotsuchi were among the most important political figures in the ninja world.
Dragon Ball Super recently allowed women to become more important in terms of physical power in the franchise, although it took a long time ⏰ to get to that point. Fortunately, Naruto has always allowed the Kunoichis to take part in battles and be important, right from the start.
Dragon Ball and Naruto take place in fictional worlds that weren't meant to mirror our version of Earth. 🌏 Despite this, a version of Adolf Hitler appeared in one of the Dragon Ball Z movies.
The antagonist of Dragon Ball Z: Fusion was a demon named Janemba, who broke the barrier between the real world and the afterlife. This allowed all of the evil souls trapped within Hell to return to the real world.
Goten and Trunks encountered the reincarnation of the Third Reich, which was being led into battle by a copy of Adolf Hitler, called the Dictator. Goten and Trunks then merged into Gotenks and sent the Nazis straight back to the afterlife.
The scenes with the Dictator were censored ❌ in the movie Fusionacross the world. Most international versions of Fusion Reborn had to do away with the Dictator, due to laws regarding the depiction of Nazi imagery. There were a lot of bad Naruto movies, but none of them ever invoked Godwin's Law.
One of the oldest urban legends regarding Dragon Ball is that Toriyama 🖋️ wanted to end the series earlier in the story, but was forced to continue by his editors. This is not true, although the series could have ended sooner than it did.
Dragon Ball ended with Goku's first meeting with Uub and leaving for training. The series tried to make a comparison between Uub and the child version of Goku, which never made much sense. This is probably one of the reasons Dragon Ball has had several different sequels over the years.
Naruto's goal was to become Hokage. He achieved that goal in the end, which was a natural point to end the story. We then saw his son do the same pranks he did in the first issue, which brought the series to a satisfactory end. 🎉
There are probably a lot of people who will disagree with what is said in this article. 📰 Naruto certainly has its detractors and the show has its flaws. Despite Naruto's flaws, there is one aspect of Dragon Ball that the saga has managed to avoid. You might hate Uzumaki Naruto, but at least you've never seen his penis.
Akira Toriyama made sure to include full nudity for Goku and Bulma in the Dragon Ball manga, at a time when they were 13 and 16, respectively. You could argue that Dragon Ball was a product of its time and that there are different sensibilities - the nudity of young boys in Japanese culture is sometimes seen as a sign of innocence.
Yamcha spies on Bulma naked as she gets out of the shower. These scenes led to the Dragon Ball manga being removed from "ToysRUs" stores until they had been sufficiently censored. ❌
Naruto is defined by his relationships with others. As an orphan, he cherished the bonds he had forged with the other Ninjas in his village. He also endured feelings of abandonment and isolation. These are times that all human beings go through at one time or another. Kishimoto ✒️ has managed to weave the human drama with the fantastic ninja action.
Goku is a great fighter, but he's an awful father, husband, and friend. The only thing Goku cared about was fighting, which meant he had no problem abandoning his family. Moreover, Goku's plan to defeat Cell consisted of putting his son in danger, which led Piccolo 🤢 to accuse him of
It's possible to love Goku like a hero, but it's hard to associate with him on a personal level. Naruto goes through the same trials and tribulations that many children and teenagers do, which attracts fans as they want to know if things have turned out to be okay for him. 🔮
