I’d only seen DBZ and Super, but I’ve been reading it slowly myself in colour, and it’s pretty incredible. I can barely think of any series that handles it’s main cast so well. They all get so much screen time and are often recurring. Not many of them are gimmick characters either, like in the case of many series with large casts (Fairy Tail, Black Clover).
Goku’s innocence, nonchalance, and lack of understanding of society makes for some hilarious comedy too. And it still manages to pull off incredible, and often hilarious fights as well. Art is simple, yet quirky and expressive, and it makes the universe believable and alive.
Coming out of DBZ or Super which pretty much ignore most of the cast, and spend their whole time focusing on hair, it’s hard to imagine they were written by the same person. Especially so if you skipped the original like myself and many have, you probably never considered Dragon Ball a series with impressive writing. And even more impressive is that most of it holds up incredibly well today, just showing how far ahead of its time it was. I guess that’s why it didn’t perform particularly well until a few volumes in (that fake out ending was hilarious though). There’s so much all this cancel fodder could learn from looking more closely at OG DB.
