Shenron’s Dad is Dead, Long Live Shenron’s Dad

About a year and change ago I decided I was going to review the entire Dragonball series, from the first, just called Dragonball through Super. It was ambitious, and it turns out, kind of boring.

I am putting my series long review on hold. This is happening for a few reasons, but the biggest one is that the show began to feel like a chore. There is a lot of Dragonball to cover, and it feels so much longer because not that much happens episode to episode. At the same time, there is a lot of other anime (and things that aren’t anime!) that demand my time and attention and that I’d honestly rather be writing about.

I’m still planning to write on Medium, hopefully more frequently than before, and I might even still write about Dragonball sometimes, but the franchise long review is no more. I have unsubbed from FUNimation and finally dug into the new season of Bojack Horseman.

But let me summarize some things about Dragonball as a way of wrapping up this weird project:

1. It’s too fuckin long. There’s just way too much of it, and while I know it was so that the manga could stay ahead of the show, the show suffers for it.
2. It can be surprisingly heartfelt. It’s a show that sets the stage for a lot of what draws me to anime in that it isn’t afraid of big fights or big emotions.
3. The LORE. As a kid, I feel like I understood this more, but as an adult, I think a lot of what Dragonball is had flattened to the point that…