With our March Madness Tenkaichi Tournament behind us and Future Trunks crowned the Basketball Tenkaichi, Jelli and Bekinney continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon by tackling the first arc of the manga, and then have a discussion of the Pilaf Arc to wrap up their review of the initial arc of Dragon Ball.
In this episode:
- Jelli and Bekinney find themselves trapped after an unfortunate encounter
- Brief plot synopsis of the end of the Pilaf arc and recapping the arc as a whole
- A few words about how this was almost the end of Dragon Ball, including sales figures as compared to Dr. Slump, Toriyama's first manga hit.
- We ruminate on whether the comparisons to Journey to the West will continue, now that the story will be spinning off into more uncharted territory.
- We briefly discuss how Toriyama and Torishima put their heads together to re-invent Dragon Ball moving forward and the lessons they learned from the sales and interest in the manga at this point
- We talk about the "arcs" of Dragon Ball and how they differ between manga and anime, because Toriyama himself has never organized or talked about the story in terms of arcs
- There is debate about the best name for the Pilaf Arc given that Pilaf is a more minor player overall, and we discuss whether it should be the Goku Arc, lumped into the Training Arc (along with what comes next) or dubbed some version of "The Journey to the West Arc"
- We break down the manga in detail, discuss what it did better or worse than the anime, and give some overall scores and ratings
- and more, including some general pop culture, trivia, and editorializing, as usual.
Join us, as we continue to uncover the cultural meanings, publication facts, inspirations and more behind the wildly popular Dragon Ball franchise.
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