COMPARISON : Naruto Manga and Naruto Anime vs DBZ Manga and DBZ Anime

[Kisame Hoshigaki]

this whole comparison started with me and my little brother the other day as he and i have been watching the naruto anime (he does not read manga of any kind)

my little brother is a pretty serious anime fan, as he watches several different anime, of which DBZ may be one of his all time favorites behind (trigun and hellsing i think)

and he had given up on naruto a while back siting that it had too many flashbacks and too much drama, but i pressured him into giving it another try because i thought he really needed to see the rest of the story (he actually had stopped back in naruto before the naruto vs sasuke fight at the VotE)

anyway we watched a TON Of the anime all the way from where he left off to i think we stopped right after the 5 kage summit meeting

once again he claimed naruto had too many flash backs, (mainly when it involves anything with sasuke)
and i almost had to agree, right whenever naruto and kakashi encountered sasuke after the fight between sasuke and danzou there were three episodes in a row that included flashbacks of either sakura and sasuke or sasuke and naruto or some other random flashback

it was rediculous, as the manga does not demonstrate nearly as many flashbacks nor does it emphasise the drama nearly as much (most mangas dont emphasis drama as much as animes but what i am trying to say is that the naruto anime goes full retard)

so the point came up with my little brother that i had claimed that naruto was the "next best thing" to DBZ when it came to action cartoons, and he said after watching the several hundred episodes "naruto is no where close to DBZ, its like comparing a bottle of finely aged wine to a carton of some sour molded grape juice"

to which i almost had to agree, then i said "well the naruto anime is certainly put together rather poorly, however the manga is amazing, when i compare the naruto manga to the DBZ manga, they are both pretty close when it comes to overall quality of the story and the fighting and action, but the DBZ anime does seem to be put together MUCH MUCH better than the naruto anime"
also there comes the romance exaggerations

for example if you read the manga, there is not nearly as much hinted or implied romance between sakura and naruto as there is in the manga, for example, if you watch the anime when naruto is trying to master the rasen-shuriken technique, the anime adds in that sakura was visiting him often and leaving notes of encouragement and they had the whole romantic "under the stars or moon" episode that made it look like sakura was questioning whether she loved sasuke or naruto

that shit didnt happen in the manga at ALL
and i am of the opinion that shit like that should not be added to the anime, filler sure, but dont taint the pureness of the manga with falsified content such as this

also when it comes to filler ,it seems that naruto is WAY worse about adding more filler than DBZ and also timing the filler worse, for example during naruto's conversation with nagato at the end of the PAIN fight, they interruped with two filler episodes about the legacy of the 4th hokage

i mean really? DBZ never interrupted the climax of an arc with filler

so i want you guys opinions, when you look at how far the naruto anime deviates from the naruto manga, both in content, filler additions, drama and romance exaggerations, and the same exaggerations, deviations and additions to the DBZ anime from the manga

do you guys agree with my assessment, or am i way off????

MODS PLEASE DO NOT COMBINE THIS THREAD, if you move it, that is fine, just dont combine it with one of those other threads because i dont want it to get buried in some other off topic conversation

---------- Post added at 06:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:57 PM ----------

also at the end of the naruto anime (before sippuuden)
there were like 70 episodes in a row of filler

70 freaking episodes, i mean really???

WTF is up with that? does anyone know WHY there was so much filler at the end of the original Naruto anime? i am assuming it had something to do with TV contracts or licensing agreements or something

[hoeru]

Maybe it's just me, but in general, IMHO, the TV Tokyo serieses I've seen (Naruto, Fairy Tail, Bleach) do have more filler arcs than those broadcasted by Fuji TV (Toriko, One Piece).

But I haven't watched much anime series lately, only One Piece every month four episodes at once. Fairy Tail was my last TV Tokyo broadcasted anime - but its censorship simply sucked - so I stopped following after Fantasia. I was off Naruto once the filler around Sora unfolded, and Bleach before the Fake Karakura.

[susanoo13]

Naruto manga started it's anime at chapter 140, at which after the Kakashi gaiden there was a month off and the anime has reached chapter 237(episode 135) when the manga was at chapter 275 at a place where it's almost an entirely new series, this wasn't like DBZ's Buu saga which took about 70-90 chapters and then the manga ended we're taking about a part which already lasts more than 300 chapters so of course they need to make a very serious gap between the manga and anime and after that traumatizing experience for both viewers and studio they thought about every possible way of lowering the content used in each episode yet the Naruto manga unlike OP manga can't pack as much in every chapter which led to all sorts of stalling methods - some were filler arcs and some were internal fillers.

About DBZ it never had much filler arcs to begin with, there was mostly internal fillers whic were making the battles longer, getting comments from other characters, moving to Roshi/Chichi/Dr. Breif for a comic relief for a few minutes and such, the only filler arcs that I know of and I haven't read the complete manga is the Garlic Jr. arc and the afterlife tournament.
An example of DBZ filler would be the way in the fight with Kid Buu the Ginyu force and such who fell into hell see the battle with Freeza, cell and King cold and Babidi appears and tells them he taught Buu how to fight(episode 280 IIRC around 2 minutes after the last episode PV).

[Kisame Hoshigaki]

in my opinion, the additional fighting scene filler in DBZ was not that hard to swallow as a fan of the manga, the garlic junior stuff hurt worse than anything else as it had not bearing on anything canon at all

even the gohan in highschool stuff was at least just exaggerated from the canon

and i actually liked the gokou vs pikon other world tournament stuff

not saying naruto doesnt have some good filler, i actually find some of it watchable

but as a whole it occurs WAY too often and deviates way too far from the story

[metalia]

Naruto anime is bullshit. So yes, your bro is right.

The manga is complitely on another lvl, and for lots of people it is better than DBZ.

[Kisame Hoshigaki]

Naruto anime is bullshit. So yes, your bro is right.

The manga is complitely on another lvl, and for lots of people it is better than DBZ.

honestly i would have to agree that the naruto manga is a bit more captivating than the DBZ manga, however i didnt really read the DBZ manga as it was coming out because i was only like 7 or 8 back then, so i didnt really know about manga and such

so being the manga-nerd that i am now, i probably would have been all crazy about the DBZ manga as it was coming out

but i know that now i cannot wait for naruto to come out every single week, its sad but wednesday is my favorite day of the week

so to summarize how i think about this subject

naruto manga = or > than DBZ manga, but its very close

but DBZ anime definitely > naruto anime, mainly due to the poor choice of timing and overall massive amounts of filler and also the flashbacks in the middle of fights
(one flashback that i didnt mention earlier was the fight between tobi and konan in the rain villiage, i mean seriously why couldnt that flashback have happened before or right after the fight DONT INTERRUPT FIGHTS WITH FLASHBACKS!!!)

[Kay3795]

I love the manga but despise the anime. It should have been like part one but sadly that's not the case

[Kisame Hoshigaki]

the anime isnt terrible, its just average, sadly it could be epic

but the animation team took too many liberties, adding drama flashbacks and romance where they shouldnt and interrupting plot climaxes

i think the dragon ball z or.dragon ball anim .are better than the dragonball manga or at least just as good

[Rahan]

Did you really read Dragon Ball or are you just talking about it from your DBZ experience ?

The super fast pace makes it an amazing read.
Dragon Ball was easily as badly hurt by its anime than Naruto.

[Kisame Hoshigaki]

Did you really read Dragon Ball or are you just talking about it from your DBZ experience ?

The super fast pace makes it an amazing read.
Dragon Ball was easily as badly hurt by its anime than Naruto.

yes i did read most of it, did i read every chapter? no

but i read everything from the fight with piccolo jr. on, so i did not read ALL of the early DB stuff when goku was a kid, i should go back and read all of that

i will say that the filler in DBZ is a bit disturbing, the addition of fighting scenes, even if short, that never happened, throw off the entire scope of how powerful the goodguys and bad guys are especially in the buu saga

but as disturbing as alot of the DBZ filler is, it doesnt hold a candle to the monstrous filler in naruto, i mean jesus 70 filler episodes in a row at the end of part 1 of the anime


sickening :no

[Lighty]

On DBZ i didn't even notice that it was "filler" in the first place. Didn't read the manga so I can't compare Naruto and DBZ as a manga, but as for the anime i found the little fillers that were there entertaining and not that bad. Actually i never skipped something in DBZ or wanted to skip something. The naruto anime is a total different story. The material used for the fillers sucks, everyone here could write a better filler arc than most of the ones presented. Often the displayed techniques suck, the villians are fodder and its always the same concept. Nartuo making a fool out of himself, encountering a guy. That guys doesn't like Naruto. Naruto's pissed, *talk no jutsu* Guy likes Naruto. *invent just another special rasengan variation* Enemy is finished off.
I'd like to see some serious charakters with "normal" abilities. Not everyone has to be a monster/idiot/moron. They could do some serious missions, and then i don't mind integrating some romance/love stories. It's all fine but it needs to be done on a certain level.
So yeah: Naruto anime < DBZ Anime!

[Suzaku]

Dragon Ball is frankly a really short manga. 42 volumes.

The Dragon Ball anime series is actually chock full of filler material -- even the first episode of DBZ was almost completely filler. A lot of people simply didn't realize it because they watched it on Toonami and had never read the manga. A lot of people were also too young to realize how often DBZ lapses into downright shitty animation (seems like any episode where a character transforms for the first time is animated really well, and then all the fight scenes in the next episode looks like crap).

The filler in DB is almost entirely composed of extended and additional fights, and additional dialogue/powering up. There are fight scenes in the manga which take only a few panels, which are expanded into episode or multi-episode long fights in the anime. A lot of the time the new fighting sequences consist of stock footage of the two characters floating through the air punching so fast that their hands and legs are blurred, or POV shots of a character's face getting knocked around for 15-20 seconds. Powering up usually takes only a page or two in the manga, generally there will be a couple panels of hair changing and muscle bulging, and then a full-page spread. In the anime they'll grunt and groan for minutes while rocks and pebbles gradually lift off the ground, slow panning shots of their body changing, and then a slow panning shot of their pose copies from the full page spread.


The animation quality in Naruto is usually pretty okay these days. Even the Korean B-Teams can make the characters look correct, even if the animation is jerky and bland. More often than not they get the character's appearance and proportions to look correct, though that wasn't always true. At its best, though, the animation is incredible, even during filler arcs (the first episode of the Chikara arc is frankly a masterpiece of animation and direction, absolutely feature film quality).

Where the Naruto anime usually stumbles is the content of its filler. While I personally don't mind the longer story arcs that they integrated into the overall storylines (the 12 Guardian Ninja and Three-Tails arcs are solid), and even some of the shorter story arcs (the Six Tails arc, and the current Chikara arc is so far being done extremely well), a lot of the filler has been episodic.

This episodic filler will generally be a single short mission involving an original anime character with some sort of moral for one of the Konoha shinobi. I hate these. They add nothing to the overall plot, very rarely actually fill plot holes or expand on concepts and themes related to the main plot, and don't even really add much in the way of character development.

Case in point, the recent Seven Swordsmen of the Mist "arc," which boiled down to three episodes, one focused on Sai, one focused on Gai and Kakashi, and one focused on Omoi. Hell, Jinin Akebino didn't even get to show off a single named ninjutsu or taijutsu technique. Anyway, I was really disappointed with these episodes, even though we at least got a couple decent fight scenes out of them. I'd have much rather had each Swordsmen get a couple episodes worth of battle, with some details on their history.

Worse, though, is that filler material is frequently stock footage from earlier episodes, presented as flashbacks. Sometimes they flashback to things that happened within the last few episodes. Not only is this a waste of time, it's utterly boring, adds absolutely nothing to the plot, and often slows down the action and dramatic impact of an episode. It's a shame that new fight sequences are so rare.

That said, I generally prefer the Naruto anime to the Dragon Ball anime because it has a consistently higher calibur of animation, and at its best moments reaches film/OVA quality.

I wouldn't mind someday getting a Naruto Kai with a lot of that filler material excised, however.

[danzouismadara]

DBZ is a classic. enough said. DBZ>Naruto

[Airgrimes]

DBZ is a classic. enough said. DBZ>Naruto
It's hard to compare. Because of this reason.
DBZ ran at a time when it had little competition from other top mangas like Naruto has had. Unlike Naruto which has run in a magazine against One Piece, Bleach, Toriko, Prince of Tennis, Slam Dunk, Yu-Gi-Oh, Shaman King, Eyeshield 21, Death Note, Bakuman, HunterxHunter, Hitman Reborn.

DBZ is what inspired basically all mangas that came after it. So its hard to compare the manga.
In terms of Anime, I put DBZ over Naruto.

Naruto's animation is frequently poor for nowadays.
The Movie 5 was so non-canon it was ridiculous, the fillers are awful.
With Sora arc, 3tails arc and 6tails arc all beginning really well but suddenly becoming awful.
We've had 30episodes of filler at least 2-3 times in the series. It just sucks.
The fillers are also bad.

I would say DBZ handled the filler issue better than how Naruto handle it. In fact, Naruto can't handle it.

[M3J]

Dragon Ball = Naruto, IMO, both Part I. They were brilliant.

DBZ < Naruto Part II. Both start out good but get worse with few good moments 'til end/current. DBZ is so overrated and so much worse than Dragon Ball.


The anime sucks all around, too much filler in both series.